I’ve long been taken with the core ideas of the universal historian Arnold J. Toynbee. A fundamental concept of his philosophy of history is that large movements of people drive history and not individuals. As a young undergraduate that concept stuck me as revelatory.
Consider, for example, Alexander the Great. Most would think that he played an essential role in history. But one can argue that the results of his achievements would have occurred even in his absence. After Alexander, the Greeks came to dominate the regions around the eastern Mediterranean. But one can argue that the Greeks would have come to dominate those regions anyway. Their advantages in technology, learning, culture, and the mastery of phalanx made their dominance of these regions inevitable. If it weren’t Alexander, some other general or king would have led the Greeks to victory over the Persians and dominance of the regions around the eastern Mediterranean.
Similar arguments can be made for any great individual in history, even in the history of science. For example, if Sir Isaac Newton had not been born, then Gottfried Leibniz would have invented calculus at about the same time. If Albert Einstein hadn’t conceived of Special Relativity in 1905, then Henri Poincaré or some other scientist would have.
Toynbee’s philosophy of history is often contrasted with that of Oswald Spengler. In Spengler’s view, key heroic figures play essential and fundamental roles in history. In many ways I have come to regard the current play of world affairs as a clash between adherents of Spengler and adherents of Toynbee.
To the conservatives, Bush after 9/11 became that archetypal, heroic figure: the champion on the white horse. That image of Bush was sold and pushed remorselessly. Ultimately, we had evangelical Christian children being taught to pray at life-sized images of Bush. Bush and the neo-conservatives were going to remake the Middle East into a stable, pristine, democratic, reliable supplier of petrochemical products to the West. The whole endeavor was and stubbornly remains a statement of faith in Spengler’s philosophy.
There are those like Atrios or Digby who have argued from the earliest days that the entire Iraq enterprise was doomed inherently from the beginning. I don’t know that they are students of the philosophy of history. Perhaps they are only arguing from a commonsense point of view. Nonetheless, they seem to be arguing consciously or not from a Toynbee perspective.
Regardless, viewing the growing crisis in the Middle East through the prism of Spengler and Toynbee has been very insightful for me. I have long argued for some sort of partition of Iraq as the ultimate solution. In 1920, three very disparate regions were stitched together by the British to form Iraq. Tremendous violence and intimidation was ultimately required to hold these disparate regions together. Those forces holding Iraq together have largely been dissipated. Now, step-by-step, Iraq is being partitioned, often through the most ghastly and brutal means.
It would be far better to establish an orderly process to partition Iraq then continue on this bloody road. Maintaining a sham parliamentary democracy accomplishes such a pathetic, shabby set of goals. Bush and his sycophants get to maintain their fantasy of Chimpy as the great hero on the rearing charger. Republicans get to use the imprimatur of war to sell their electoral campaigns. Conservative Israeli’s get to weave their own narrow wants into America’s strategic aims and even the very foundations of global stability.
Of course, one wishes for stability and democracy for the Middle East. I do believe that democracy was slowly entraining in the Middle East before the Iraq fiasco. I understand that there was a great desire for true democracy building in Iran because the people there saw freedom and democracy growing in Turkey. I can’t imagine freedom and democracy spreading throughout the Middle East unless it is through an organic, indigenous process.
In the final event, I think the entire American adventure in Iraq will have amounted to nothing of historical importance. Alexander the Great achieved significant and spectacular victories in India. Many would argue, Indian historians in particular, that all that effort by the Greeks in India and all those military triumphs amounted to nothing. Virtually all traces of Greek influence in India vanished. It was Alexander’s army that decided, there by the Ganges, that it was time to go home. Where Alexander reached too far nothing of historical importance persisted. His common soldiers knew he had gone too far. It’s time and past time for the American people to insist on bring the troops home from Iraq.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Rambling Thoughts on Climate Change, the Bible, and Quantum Mechanics
It is utterly shocking that the conservative community does not believe there is a linkage between human activities and global warming in such high percentages. But Digby has a poll result up from the National Journal:
At some point it became an essential principle of the conservative community to question and deny science. Maybe it sprang from the evangelical movements imperative to refute archaeology, paleontology, carbon dating, cosmology, and physics in order to validate a strict interpretation of the Old Testament. I can’t imagine more than a handful of these true believers understand the arcane calculations behind the interpretation of some biblical scholars that the universe is no more that 6,000 years old. But they have been told that is strict biblical interpretation and they accept it unquestioningly.
However if you believe in the Old Testament shouldn’t you be doing a lot of stoning of wayward sons and non-virginal brides? As well, if one followed a strict interpretation of the Old Testament shouldn’t you be going somewhere outside of your community every day to make a latrine, and defecate. Some might argue that by using the privacy of a bathroom one is keeping the principle of the Lord’s injunction to defecate out of sight of one’s community but in a modern sensible way.
I can’t imagine any more than a handful of people in the world do follow a strictly, literal interpretation of the Bible. Certainly, the vast majority of individuals who cling to the notion that the universe is only 6,000 years old do not in many ways follow in their day-to-day lives a strict, literal interpretation of the Bible. Well, isn’t accepting the testimony of science about the nature of God’s universe as accurate and not accepting someone else’s biblical assertion of a 6,000-year-old universe just wisdom? Frankly, those folks who promote their divination of a 6,000 year old universe stink of idolatry and false-prophecy.
The rejection of science became a well-funded industry because of the tobacco lobby and the oil industry. The oil industry through the AEI is preparing to go to war against the Paris conference adoption of a 90 percent certainty that human activity is contributing to global climate change. That is insanity.
Stephan Colbert did a nice analogy on rejecting climate change science last night. He wasn’t letting his allergic reaction to shrimp get in the way of his affinity for shrimp cocktail. He would simply shop around until he found a specialist who would interpret his allergic reaction as eczema. When talking to folks about the science of climate change I have often used a medical analogy. Imagine you or your child has a tumor. Nine out of ten specialists recommend surgery to remove the tumor follow by aggressive chemotherapy. The tenth specialist urges a regimen of herbs and enemas. Over 99 percent of people would go with the nine of ten. That, of course, is the state climate science. We, humanity, have to act.
I really galls me that so many stuffed shirt, right-wing nutbars nonetheless put themselves forth as experts in this field. You’ve got your Bob Novaks, Charles Krauthammers, Senator Inhofe and a phalanx of others, proclaiming themselves the Albert Einsteins of climate change science. Most of these characters are doing so for naked ideological reasons and clearly state that, often in the form of invective against Al Gore and his film. They rant about tree huggers and how the Kyoto Accord is a scheme to institute global socialism. Clearly, most of these wingnuts absolutely lack the credentials to speak on the issue with a shred of credibility or even the most minimum level of scientific literacy.
This calls to mind the Bolsheviks of the 1930’s rejecting quantum mechanics as a foundational pillar of modern physics. The Bolsheviks did so for ideological reasons. It did not fit in with their interpretation of history and reality. They considered quantum mechanics to be a bourgeois delusion. But today, even among Bolsheviks, quantum mechanics is the established, accepted interpretation of reality.
There are some scientists who do not, to this day, accept the usual interpretation of quantum mechanics. Just like there are some scientists who not, at this time, accept the interpretation that the existing data points to human activity contributing to global climate change. But for right-wing nutbars to interject themselves into the climate change debate as pontificating experts is utterly foolish. They might as well decide on their own that the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics is wrong, their own interpretation is correct, and then nominate themselves for a Nobel Prize in Physics.
At some point it became an essential principle of the conservative community to question and deny science. Maybe it sprang from the evangelical movements imperative to refute archaeology, paleontology, carbon dating, cosmology, and physics in order to validate a strict interpretation of the Old Testament. I can’t imagine more than a handful of these true believers understand the arcane calculations behind the interpretation of some biblical scholars that the universe is no more that 6,000 years old. But they have been told that is strict biblical interpretation and they accept it unquestioningly.
However if you believe in the Old Testament shouldn’t you be doing a lot of stoning of wayward sons and non-virginal brides? As well, if one followed a strict interpretation of the Old Testament shouldn’t you be going somewhere outside of your community every day to make a latrine, and defecate. Some might argue that by using the privacy of a bathroom one is keeping the principle of the Lord’s injunction to defecate out of sight of one’s community but in a modern sensible way.
I can’t imagine any more than a handful of people in the world do follow a strictly, literal interpretation of the Bible. Certainly, the vast majority of individuals who cling to the notion that the universe is only 6,000 years old do not in many ways follow in their day-to-day lives a strict, literal interpretation of the Bible. Well, isn’t accepting the testimony of science about the nature of God’s universe as accurate and not accepting someone else’s biblical assertion of a 6,000-year-old universe just wisdom? Frankly, those folks who promote their divination of a 6,000 year old universe stink of idolatry and false-prophecy.
The rejection of science became a well-funded industry because of the tobacco lobby and the oil industry. The oil industry through the AEI is preparing to go to war against the Paris conference adoption of a 90 percent certainty that human activity is contributing to global climate change. That is insanity.
Stephan Colbert did a nice analogy on rejecting climate change science last night. He wasn’t letting his allergic reaction to shrimp get in the way of his affinity for shrimp cocktail. He would simply shop around until he found a specialist who would interpret his allergic reaction as eczema. When talking to folks about the science of climate change I have often used a medical analogy. Imagine you or your child has a tumor. Nine out of ten specialists recommend surgery to remove the tumor follow by aggressive chemotherapy. The tenth specialist urges a regimen of herbs and enemas. Over 99 percent of people would go with the nine of ten. That, of course, is the state climate science. We, humanity, have to act.
I really galls me that so many stuffed shirt, right-wing nutbars nonetheless put themselves forth as experts in this field. You’ve got your Bob Novaks, Charles Krauthammers, Senator Inhofe and a phalanx of others, proclaiming themselves the Albert Einsteins of climate change science. Most of these characters are doing so for naked ideological reasons and clearly state that, often in the form of invective against Al Gore and his film. They rant about tree huggers and how the Kyoto Accord is a scheme to institute global socialism. Clearly, most of these wingnuts absolutely lack the credentials to speak on the issue with a shred of credibility or even the most minimum level of scientific literacy.
This calls to mind the Bolsheviks of the 1930’s rejecting quantum mechanics as a foundational pillar of modern physics. The Bolsheviks did so for ideological reasons. It did not fit in with their interpretation of history and reality. They considered quantum mechanics to be a bourgeois delusion. But today, even among Bolsheviks, quantum mechanics is the established, accepted interpretation of reality.
There are some scientists who do not, to this day, accept the usual interpretation of quantum mechanics. Just like there are some scientists who not, at this time, accept the interpretation that the existing data points to human activity contributing to global climate change. But for right-wing nutbars to interject themselves into the climate change debate as pontificating experts is utterly foolish. They might as well decide on their own that the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics is wrong, their own interpretation is correct, and then nominate themselves for a Nobel Prize in Physics.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Further Thoughts on Najaf
On the face of it the official accounts of the events at Najaf just defy commonsense. For example, we are asked to believe that Iraqi forces on their own decide to visit the compound of the alleged radical millenarian sect in the middle of the night by themselves. This just does not add up. Is there any account of Iraqi forces conducting such a bold night-time operation on their own? I certainly don't recall any.The allegation against the millenarian group was that they were preparing to seize Najaf and therefore should have been expected to be heavily armed. In that case, one would expect the Iraqi's to go in during the day supported by at least one American brigade and with substantial air support. Instead they go in at night by themselves. Anyone who believes that is drinking deep of the kool-aid proffered by CentCom. Frankly, anyone still drinking that has at this point less dignity, integrity and moral hygiene than your typical heroin addict.
From the moment I first read about this incident I have had the profoundest doubts about the official explanation. It just doesn’t ring true. Iraqi troops and US pilots mistaking innocent members of the Hawatimah and Khaz'al tribes for insurgents and slaughtering them along with their families is par for the course with these fucktards. The Bush administration, their CentCom minions, and the Maliki government have shown themselves to be incompetent time and again. With these guys the most fucked-up incompetent explanation of a sequence of events is always the most likely turn of events. If they slaughtered hundreds of innocent people of course their first thought would be to cover it up. Picking a millenarian group as the bad guys is just brilliant marketing.
Juan Cole today continues to case great doubt on anything but the millenarian explanation. The significant issue he has in that post is the allegation that the Hawatimah and Khaz'al tribes were going strictly to Najaf. That make no sense to him because they should have been going to Karbala for the particular celebration they were planning on attending. But that is refuted by links to accounts he has in a previous post that the tribes were going to pass through Najaf on the way to Karbala.
For me, the official account of the Najaf incident brings to mind a previous occasion when the American military slaughtered innocent men, women, and children because they held millenarian beliefs. I refer to the Wounded Knee Massacre. A good account of this event is by Dee Brown: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. There is a Wikipedia entry that is occasionally hacked. The official US military history describes the event as a battle.
From the moment I first read about this incident I have had the profoundest doubts about the official explanation. It just doesn’t ring true. Iraqi troops and US pilots mistaking innocent members of the Hawatimah and Khaz'al tribes for insurgents and slaughtering them along with their families is par for the course with these fucktards. The Bush administration, their CentCom minions, and the Maliki government have shown themselves to be incompetent time and again. With these guys the most fucked-up incompetent explanation of a sequence of events is always the most likely turn of events. If they slaughtered hundreds of innocent people of course their first thought would be to cover it up. Picking a millenarian group as the bad guys is just brilliant marketing.
Juan Cole today continues to case great doubt on anything but the millenarian explanation. The significant issue he has in that post is the allegation that the Hawatimah and Khaz'al tribes were going strictly to Najaf. That make no sense to him because they should have been going to Karbala for the particular celebration they were planning on attending. But that is refuted by links to accounts he has in a previous post that the tribes were going to pass through Najaf on the way to Karbala.
For me, the official account of the Najaf incident brings to mind a previous occasion when the American military slaughtered innocent men, women, and children because they held millenarian beliefs. I refer to the Wounded Knee Massacre. A good account of this event is by Dee Brown: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. There is a Wikipedia entry that is occasionally hacked. The official US military history describes the event as a battle.
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