Machiavellians With Double Standards

I posted a while back about David Cameron's comments on Pakistan's (alleged) dual attitude to the problem of violent islamism. As I noted it attracted quite some flack but comparatively little about the accuracy of the comments. It seems, at the very least, I was right about the popular feeling aspect of this.

'on the recent controversy over David Cameron’s comments on Pakistan the public agreed with what Cameron actually said about Pakistan and the export of terror by 66% to 15%. However, they also had negative view about Cameron’s abilities as a statesman – 30% thought he was a good statesman, 43% thought he wasn’t (compare that to his overall approval ratings which remain positive).' - UK Polling Report

What I didn't think about at the time was that the Pakistanis are not the only ones whose double standards are on display in this affair. This can be explained as just simple cognitive polyphasia (a much better term for double standards), a well know phenomenon in political polling and nothing particularly remarkable in this case. What this reflects is only that people's image of Cameron as a statesman is not in fact informed by any of diplomatic activities - this is just how people think about politics.

But in this case there is a way out of the usual indictment of public opinion. Alternatively we can explain this by saying that the public genuinely view diplomacy and statesmanship as an exercise in deception and lying. Tell the truth in the wrong circumstances and you have done the wrong thing, regardless of the facts. Nothing new in that either, that doctrine has been ever present in politics since Machiavelli, and a very mature attitude for the public to take (if that isn't too pejorative). Except that when you put it like that it starts to look like double standards and polyphasia again. Imagine the reaction if a British politician admitted having lied about domestic matters in the same way. I defy anyone to find an example of press or popular criticism of a minister for being excessively truthful about the domestic situation. Could you really see those headlines? 'Minister Admits Crime Is Rising, Should He Have Hushed It Up?' or 'PM Should Have Lied Over Economic Figures'. Lying to johnny foreigner = good, lying to Brits = bad.

The good news is that on balance I don't think this is about racism. It isn't really British people that we object to dishonesty toward, it's to us personally, but it is far easier to express it this way (it gives you a few more allies). Even though we are rarely as patriarchal as to exclaim on a regular basis 'You can't handle the truth!' we all do hold the view (don't we?) that there are at least some truths that some people really can't, or perhaps more to express it more sympathetically - shouldn't be made to, handle. And this is what is really at work, not some mistrust of other collectives, just a simple mistrust of every other person on earth! So what is to be done? If you will excuse the pun. Simple, we just have to stop trusting ourselves and what we can and can't 'handle' so that next time when we are told that there are some things that we can't or shouldn't know, for our own good, we might just believe them and be better off for it.

What Does Set Thoery Tells Us About Ethnic and Political Conflict? And Why Organic Muesli, M&S and a Toyota Prius Is The Answer...

Bear with me on this one... Today a friend of mine attempted to explain to me how, mathematically speaking, you can make something out of nothing. It's called set theory. Not sure I entirely understood it but it think it went something like this... Take any number, say four, it can't be defined as four of something - because we could conceivably have four of anything, making the pure number four the only common element. It also can't be defined mathematically, as 2 + 2 for example, because then we have exactly the same problem for 2. What we need to say is what 4 is because this will allow us to then say why 2 + 2 = 4.

Fascinatingly this can apparently be done by grouping nothing in a certain way. A mathematical group is called a set (hence set theory), for example multiple's of 2 (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12) or prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13), and there is one particular set called, somewhat ominously, the 'empty set'. Perhaps predictably the empty set is a set with nothing in it, it is actually not strictly nothing, but it does contain nothing. Think of it like a bag. What becomes apparent is that these bags don't need to contain some object to be distinct from each other. If I take two bags (sets), putting one bag inside the first and another and another bag inside that, but put only one bag inside the the second then, in spite of the fact that there is nothing that isn't a bag (set) inside of them, I can still tell which one is which if they were jumbled up.

So what the hell does that mean? Mathematically I have no idea, I'm not sure I really understood, but as usual my mind flicked to politics and what struck me is how similar political identity can be to this idea of mathematical identity. Political disputes, particularly ideological or nationalist ones - which usually boil down to identity (prescriptive in the former case and descriptive in the latter), often seem to lack content. The conflict seems so pointless, and it is impossible to discern exactly what is motivating either side.

The upcoming elections in Rwanda remind us of a perfect example of this, the substantial difference between hutu and tutsi essentially comprising a twelve centimetre average height disparity and a tolerance for milk. This is clearly no reason for killing 800,000 people, so we tend to explain it in terms of how the two sides are the same. We say, though often tacitly, that there is a universal human tendency to commit vile and horrific acts for very spurious reasons, and this explains it. The fact that the Tutsi RPF (now the governing party) started the Rwandan Civil War, and possibly assassinated the president by shooting down his jet, leading eventually to the genocide is usually a good place to start when trying to prove this.

I think this is wrong for two reasons. Firstly it leads to a phenomenon that the brilliant documentary maker Adam Curtis calls 'Oh-Dearism', essentially the tendency for us to give up and stop trying when we think that problems are happening for no reason and are therefore intractable. Secondly it may simply be wrong, and I think set theory can help explain why (if only as a good analogy). The problem is that we are looking for a difference in content to explain the reason for a conflict (and failing, like looking for an explanation for 4 in 2 + 2), when we actually don't need one.

The real reason for politically or ethnically tribal conflict may in fact be down to the clarity and distribution of boundaries and borders and not the political or ethnic characteristics that the argument is ostensibly about. In other words it is more important when fighting an enemy to know that you are different than to know how. When the boundary between you, your group, the people 'like you' and the other individual or group is of the right kind then conflict becomes almost inevitable (given the appropriate means). That probably sounds like a long way of saying the same thing as the old 'look at what you have in common, not what separates you' line that is so popular in modern multicultural politics. In some sense it is, but it doesn't go far enough because it fails to deal with the areas of division, it simply tells people to ignore them in the hope that (because there is no substance) they will disappear, even though there is no reason to think that they necessarily will.

What is the message then? Should we try to eliminate all distinction between people in an attempt to end conflict? This is certainly what the Soviet Union tried in response to the hugely problematic issue of ethnic conflict in the former Russian Empire. But, as that example should show, this kind of policy rarely has a happy outcome (although to come back to Rwanda this seems to be what they are trying now, even if they have avoided persecution and mass deportation as tools so far). So we are back to Oh-Dearism then? Not quite, because in politics, unlike in mathematics, we can make use of those sweet shades of grey. As I have said it is borders, not substantive differences, itself that are the problem - and this is key. The problem is greatly lessened, if not eradicated, by the clear commonly recognised existence of positions (political, ethnic, economic, cultural) between you and your erstwhile opposite. The cause of conflict is not difference, but polarisation of those differences around two implacable opposites that cannot be mixed. Common ground simply in other areas (as per 'focus on what unites, not divides') simply will not do.

This is of course not at all new. Aristotle said something similar, and his version reveals the disturbing fact that the cure in this case might just be worse than the disease. What is needed, so he said, was a middle group to sit in the middle on the issues that would otherwise polarise society and cause damaging division - a group of middle income, middle culture, well tempered sort of individuals. A group of people who have both conservative and progressive tendencies (my words not his) that will bring stability simply by existing between the extremes. Yes that's right folks - It's the middle class. So next time you see a Toyota Hybrid 4x4, crammed full of organic, sustainably produced whole-foods, dropping Julian and Artemis off at that CofE school that they got into by moving house, even though they don't really agree with religious education - but the discipline must be good and it's last ofstead report was just marvellous! Before heading off to John Lewis to pick up some nick-naks for the kitchen. Just bite the back of your hand and remember - they are holding society together!

A Question Of Purpose

I sometimes think that a big part of finding a reason for life is a just matter of finding a job the right size for us. A task that fits us as people, something to do with the time, a purpose. Preferences differ - some like a task that is exclusively their own, something only they are working on. Others pick a task that must be cooperative, impossible to do alone. In either case they will either want to see it finished in a their lifetime, or long after, or even not at all - like the perpetual maintenance of a garden, why should we need our great works to end? It sounds so simple doesn't it, even if you disagree? There is just so much to do, and any given person is usually such a capable animal - given the chance. With such a choice, who could fail to find what they were looking for?

And yet it doesn't seem to work that way, at least for some of us. It isn't that we don't see the problems, or care about the solutions - we might even have some idea about what they are, but they seem to be on a different scale and the wrong shape for us to interact with them. But perhaps this is just a combination of those old excuses about one man/woman not being able to make a difference and that detestably aloof attitude that some problems are just beneath your efforts to solve them, draped in a pseudo-philosophical smokescreen. I'm not honest or introspective enough to know which.

Why Should We Want Srong Individuals?

I posted yesterday about how pathetic we seem to feel individuals are that they need such optimal conditions to bloom. Of course the biggest underlying assumption was that we should feel that strong individualism is something that we want to preserve. Then I remembered something I had written about this before, something about Alighiero Boetti. Boetti was part of the artistic avant-garde movement that emerged during 1960s radicalism in Italy. If he was right then I was wrong to worry about the sheepishness of modern individualism - it might actually be a good thing.

Boetti felt that self-expression, far from being in opposition to capitalism, was actually driving it forward by its obsession with creation. My personal favourite way of thinking about his argument is by looking at ‘the American dream’ – and it’s relevant to Boetti because his work really starts to get going from the time when it was turning a little sour in the mid to late 1960s. The dream is a lifestyle full of individualism, which for lack of a better definition right now means a life of free choices from as wide a range as possible. Your Job, your relationships, where you live, how you live and ultimately (perhaps a little grandiose) the kind of person you want to be are all theoretically, but also importantly under law, down to Individuals. The American dream is also one full of objects. Left off that last list are your choice of house, car, furniture, clothes, pet, TV, newspaper and all the other half-utilitarian half-symbolic fixtures of a modern life are all down to yours truly.

Radicalism in the 1960s and 1970s is defined by the emphatic rejection of the latter list. Their idea, rarely significantly changed since then, is that any objects bought and sold in the market are not in fact about the individual needs and desires of those who buy them but are actually about the profit of the few who sell them. Capitalism, on this view, is in fact held up by the ideological domination of politics, education, work and family relationships and ultimately the psychological life of citizens. One slogan of the New Left at that time that I think expresses this nicely, ‘There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed’. That really is another story (a totally fascinating one) but the point is that Boetti went much further.

The real problem, so he thought, lay in the requirement, both social and psychological, to choose anything at all. This is because in the self expression that comes from those choices we are holding ourselves and others up to unrealistic standards of the degree of control and insight in our creations. In other words we believe that the world really can be shaped by the plans of inspired individuals. The upshot of this is that not only do the objects that were previously thought to free us become grotesque limitations, as the new left thought, but so do our attempts to control and shape our own lives. Living your life to some kind of narrative, to have a plan, to ‘know what you want from life’ is in fact a prison.

I’m perfectly willing to admit that I have no idea how to live a life like that, even if I wanted to, and it was perhaps for that reason that Boetti was a conceptual artist and not a philosopher. A major tool of his experiments was chance and randomness. He would send letters to his friends with deliberately wrong addresses using random combinations of stamps which would circle the postal system and occasionally return- at which point he would exhibit them. Even stranger though was where he eventually found a society that he thought expressed his thesis best – Afghanistan. He set up a Hotel there in 1971.

Afghanistan was a country free of created objects...

"Afghan homes, for example, are empty: no furniture therefore no objects commonly placed on furniture. There are only a few carpets and mattresses on which people lie down, drink, smoke and eat. I also like the fact that Afghans wear the same clothes at day and at night. Nothing has been added to the landscape. Rocks are moved and used to build cube houses. The resistance with which Afghans oppose our civilisation has always amazed me." - Alighiero Boetti

Leaving aside that the situation he found was at least in part due to simply poverty, the idea that something about the Afghan way of life is intrinsically resistant to grand inspired political narratives and large scale transformative schemes, for the same reason as their rejection of conventional object creation, certainly puts a new spin on the ‘progress’ we are attempting to bring to that country now.

At any rate Afghanistan had a hand in the creation of his series of works called ‘Mappa’. Mappa were a series of embroidered maps of the world. The landmass of each country was covered by that countries current flag. The significance of this was that although he commissioned the work all of its features were, in actuality, totally beyond his control. The work was carried out by multiple afghan craftswomen and the design was down in essence to the geopolitics that formed the shape and colour (because of the flags) of the landmasses (which in turn are a feature of geology).

"For me the work of the embroidered Mappa is the maximum of beauty. For that work I did nothing, chose nothing, in the sense that: the world is made as it is, not as I designed it, the flags are those that exist, and I did not design them; in short I did absolutely nothing; when the basic idea, the concept, emerges everything else requires no choosing." - Alighiero e Boetti, 1974

Excuses, Excuses...

‘I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.’ — Marilyn Monroe.

If that is not the best excuse I have ever heard not to even try to change yourself then the better ones are so good that I haven’t even noticed them yet, and they still look like good reasons. I came across this psychological hook of a phrase, once again, on Facebook - and when I say came across what I mean is it was thrust at me by the news feed. I suspect it won’t be the last time I see it and it isn't hard to see why. What it speaks to is the idea that people can absolve themselves of the fully confessed negative aspects of their life and personality so long as they can find enough things that they think are good to weigh them out. In other words, a total abdication of responsibility.

This attitude is widespread and easy to recognise, bring up something critical about someone and more often than not the defence will include a statement about some good or righteous act that they have done, no disputation of the negatives, just a simple ‘but also...’. You will hear that same justifying argument from glib battlefield generals of the ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs’ school, or from terrorist groups (just look at the RAF in post war Germany), and religious apologists who go on endlessly about charity work. What we often forget to ask is how on earth these things are relevant. Are they connected in some necessary way? Is collateral damage somehow compulsory in even just war?  Does glorious revolution simply mean horrific violence? Do we have to tolerate the odd holy war if we want the YMCA? It would be a brave man who answers yes to all of these. Not that he would be necessarily wrong, and Friedrich Nietzsche did indeed argue for something similar to this. Certainly however I don't think that this is what people mean when they thoughtlessly blurt out the quote that started this thought.

Moreover, even if they do, they crucially differ from Nietzsche in motivation. People use this as a reason not to try, so long as they are good enough, and this is surely misguided - because the only way to really find out whether you can't have the good without the bad is to actually try. Easy example; before I wrote this I thought that in a literal sense you couldn't make an omelette without making eggs, and it turns out I was wrong!

Flimsy Individuals

If you dislike capitalism then it is a fair enough bet that your analysis of the problem has something to do individualism. Everyone knows this sort of argument, it's been around forever, and shows no signs of disappearing in the near future. Here is one I lifted of someone's formspring page...

'It can feel hard to justify passion about expression in a society that openly disregards the individual and works more towards it's self-created idea of economic greatness, and the individual stops being a remarkable mind with ideas and feelings and becomes a pawn in a machine, going through the motions and appreciating very little of the already tiny amount of what is really real.'

Of course the irony of this has always been, for the last 5 or 6 decades at the very least, that the other side (you know, the ones who write books about the road to serfdom, the enemies of the open society and how there are two concepts of liberty) have always made exactly the same claim about the alternatives. Look again at the quote above, swap out 'economic greatness' for 'socialist utopia' and it could be the opposite argument, just as eloquently put, now given in support of Margaret Thatcher's 'vision' in the 1975 conference speech of...

'A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master - these are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy... and on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.'

The obvious initial response it that this can only mean one thing, someone is wrong (well that was mine anyway). I'm not discounting that possibility, but I'm also not going to get into it now because I don't have the space, or the patience, or inclination, or the first clue about how to conclusively do so. So what am I trying to say? This is of course the old totalitarian horseshoe theory. Leaving aside it's academic merits it is a masterpiece of cold war politics. Bending the political spectrum to show that communists and fascists are basically pretty similar, smearing the soviets, and with the happy side effect of demonstrating maximum freedomee goodness consists in a happy blend of left and right wing politics, a middle of the road, mediocre, middle class western polity - in other words. But the difference is that for both sides now the thing attacked now is not Marxist-Lenninism, it's democratic socialism - just look to Obama's troubles with the tea party, and it's not a capitalism that even comes close to recognising William Sumner's famous remark that 'the drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be' - just look at David Cameron's progressive conservatism.

So now the question raised by these critiques seems to be not what kind of thing is bad for individuals but, rather, what on earth is not heavy enough (left or right) that it crushes all individualism? Apparently we can now only dare to express ourselves under the absolute prime conditions now. The slightest hint of disapproval or malice towards us causes people to simply give up and go with the whatever we perceive to be what we ought to do, communist or capitalist, no matter how much we dislike it? Just a little depressing...