Reflections XVII - Some Silver Nuggets

The danger of a growing empire is that with its growing hubris it often outsources its security to those that don’t have at its best interests at heart. Rome and Britain both felt prey to such a mentality.

 Regardless of historical era there has never been a shortage of spokespeople for god.

 To someone motivated by ambition truth is never a premium.

 The one commonality of sports pundits is their innate ability to make wrong predictions. They do this by chronically looking backward while driving forward.

 An institution will prosper if it has enough of a talent pool in the working body to correct for the inevitable errors of its upper echelons.

 The pitfall with political prediction is that it cannot resist the temptation to confuse the ‘is’ for the ‘ought’

Remember what you stand for

 It is my experience that if you wish to live a life of meaning that you also have beliefs that are well thought out, clear, non-intentionally hurtful and are based as best as possible on sound reasoning and logic. Now I can’t say that you should divorce emotion from your beliefs, as we are human after all, but this emotion should not override the judgement that is formed along rational lines. 

In the day-to-day chaos of life, we often sideline our conscious realization of these beliefs, even if we act sub-consciously with the same ideals in mind. This promotes somewhat of a sleepwalking approach to life that we should eschew. 

To escape such a pathology (and on one level it is such a phenomenon) I would suggest a daily cataloguing and listing of both one’s primary and secondary beliefs. This does not have to span volumes, but should be both succinct and encompassing in such a manner that it brings to mind the core of what we are as agents of free will (one of my key beliefs). I have followed such a course of action for sometime now and find it to be both refreshing and re-affirming of my role as an active player in life.

Reflections XVI - MIxed Passage of Thought

Lies survive as they provide comfort for people.

The easiest pathway for a civilization to take is regression for it requires so little effort.

One should learn from one’s successes just as much our failures for many a success was delivered on the back of a fortuitous turn of events that may never repeat themselves.

No society will ever advance if its primary objective is the destruction of another as opposed to the growth of itself. This is the Palestinian tragedy.

The problem with politics is that as much as one tries to ignore it, you are immediately stung by the reality that it is etched into all aspects of the life struggle.

 

My thoughts on Christmas

As a Jew I have to admit I like Christmas. I don't celebrate it but the sentiment, the holiday spirit and culture of giving that it engenders in a modern western society is refreshing. While I take issue with some of the gross commercialization, I can also see from an economic perspective why this is somewhat justified.

Many people wish me 'Merry Christmas' and I have no issue with this. Nothing. I don't correct them because I am Jewish and I certainly am not offended by their obvious assumption that I too celebrate the holiday. It is understandable. Christianity has been an important driver in our civilization.

All too often people I know are incensed by such remarks but in my opinion there is not much to fuss over. If you are secure in what you yourself believe and have principles and standards that you adhere to, what difference does a Merry Christmas make?

From the Archives IV - Samuel Huntington and the Trump Presidency

 I wrote this in 2017. 

There is a certain urgency about the Trump Presidency that has forced many a denizen of the West to question the direction that the civilization has been moving. As a classical liberal I have entertained these thoughts for some time.

While I celebrated the collapse of Soviet style Marxist-Leninism in the early 1990s I was not convinced that the finality of the great struggle between the powers as envisioned in Francis Fukuyama’s work The End of History and the Last Man (1992), was about to dawn . Samuel Huntington’s  The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1993) made more of an impression then and I believe that it looms even larger now.

Now Huntington himself was not a Republican.  During the Carter Administration he served in a coordinating capacity at the National Security Council and for more than half a century he played an integral role on the Harvard Faculty where he headed the Center for International Affairs. At one time he was a speech writer for Adlai Stevenson.

 His understanding of foreign affairs has almost a prophetic feel to it. Huntington argued that the pivotal clash defining the near future would be a series of confrontations between specific civilizations. These civilizations share very powerful cultural values, historical connections and in group similarities that set them apart from each other thereby transcending both economics and political constraints (and in many cases superficialities).

Huntington delineated several civilizations that he aptly named the West, Orthodoxy, Buddhist, Confucian, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Muslim and Hindu. He also identified some cleft countries that were split between various civilizations such as Nigeria and Sri Lanka, as well as ‘standalones’ like Japan.  Most civilizations gravitate toward a nexus of power - China in the case of Confucian, Russia with respect to Orthodoxy and India in the Hindu context.

In defining the West Huntington grouped together the United States, Canada, Western and Central Europe, Australia and Oceania. While most of the nation states draw somewhat from a Christian (Catholic-Protestant) moral core they have incorporated within their  framework a universalism (certainly evident in the elite) that at its root sees a world that would be all the better if others adopted enlightenment driven western values.

Standing in opposition to the West is the Muslim world of the Middle East, Northern/Western Africa, Albania, Bosnia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Maldives, Comoros, Brunei and Malaysia (as defined by Huntington). Many of these states are gripped by an Islamic resurgence that is hostile to Western Civilization and sees itself as a viable alternative worldview.

Strife and conflict would be inevitable and indeed in the post 911 world Huntington’s view carries some weight. However this is not the only fault line as we have seen with Russia and China reinvigorating themselves globally and India likely to follow suit making the Hindu claim at least on an economic level. In a further analysis Huntington even identified a civilization clash point in the United States with the inflow of Latin American immigrants into the nation (his solution a slow down followed by assimilation).

Huntington was invariably challenged on his model. Both the far left and free trade liberals criticized him for downgrading the role of economics (for different reasons of course) and playing to the vestiges of a worldview that had been swept aside by the ideological struggle of the Cold War. Others accused him of minimizing the nationalist (and religious) splits within the civilizations that he outlined. His view certainly stood in contrast to Fukuyama’s belief in a triumphant Western liberalism, let alone Karl Marx’s stance of a Hegelian march towards Communism. Huntington though was resolute in defending his paradigm and constantly warned optimists about the folly of believing that the path of history was fixed along their specific ‘utopic’ trajectory.

Reflecting on Huntington I see him in a slightly different light that makes him ever more relevant today. He articulated the reality that Particularlism would not be discarded and indeed would live to define a future that was already in the making (at the time of his writing the Balkan conflict was in full swing). International universalism could not celebrate and would have to put the champagne on hold for a while. From a Western perspective this would come to haunt our civilization as it had the most to lose from a resetting of a world order.  Demographic imbalance would speed up this transition.

Civilization Theory to some extent is what drives Trumpism. It is a reinvention of the defencse of Western Civilization (albeit more American focused) against the other. It is a reaction to the failed Internationalism of the Bush presidencies, the Clinton Administration and its obvious fall from grace under Obama. What drives Trumpism is a need to reverse decline.  On one level it represents the Huntington view reasserting itself against the consensus of the Fukuyama outlook. All the key tropes of Trump – The Wall, Trade Protection, Non-Intervention, ‘Make America Great’ are consistent with such a philosophy that has identified the threat and is acting with deliberate intent. Protecting the civilization is key.

Brexit and other Anti-EU sentiments sweeping across the European continent are a further illustration of the Civilization impulse rejecting the perceived false messiah of Internationalism. It carries with it a defense of culture that sees survival in a return to republic and away from the promises of an amorphous empire centered on platitudes.

In a sense it has replaced once ossified left versus right divide with a dichotomy of Civilization opposing Internationalism that seems to cut across class lines and will in all likelihood emerge in the forefront of policy across the West. The change may appear to have been sudden but the potential was always there. What was needed was time and the right combination of events to catalyze the realignment. It appears to have already happened.

Reflections XV - On Rome

 A point that stands out when looking at the Roman Emperors is that Tiberius, Domitian and Maxentius were a lot better than their awful representations in history. While none were superstars each was radically impacted by negative propaganda. Caligula on the other hand lived up to his vile image.

Most of Rome’s military failures were reminders that it needed to accept its boundaries. Neither the Goths in the North (and East) and the Persians in Asia had any attention of acquiescing to Roman suzerainty. Since they were not a cavalry power (unlike the Mongols) or a sea empire (like the British) their boundaries had natural limitations which deterred expansion.

The history of Rome after the fall of Caesar is an ongoing saga of the debasement of the concept of citizenship. Citizenship is what held the Republic together. It withered to oblivion during the Empire until it had lost all meaning

My OCD Story

I think that I can safely say that I have been dogged by OCD for all of my life. Its exact time of birth still remains uncertain but my earliest memories of an OCD related event most likely occurred at around age five. As a young kid I valued neatness, my room had to be organized in a definite pattern that conveyed a sense of purpose. Smaller books to larger books, toys arranged with decorum, order over chaos - structure dominating randomness. Symmetry over imbalance. Things had to be a certain way or else I was haunted by the dread of imperfection.

Once I was forced to leave in a hurry and my mom helped pack up the toys. Unfortunately she failed to return them all to their correct spot. I was haunted by the break in the natural that such recklessness conveyed. For hours afterward I ruminated on the consequence of such folly as I wondered with desperation on the severity of the misdeed.
This was one of many such actions that would linger in my mind especially if the circumstances prohibited (for some time) physical correction of the error. Such was the perilous equilibrium upon which the world’s fortune hung.

Later on my obsessions spread to cleanliness. Germs were everywhere and I loathed the notion that I a may be infected. Touching anything that appeared to be remotely unclean was a harbinger of disease and I constantly needed confirmation from my parents (more my mom than my dad) that I not fallen under the influence of some diabolical pox. I never did – clearly my immune system was tougher than I gave it credit for. However at the time this rarely mattered. For all intent of purpose I was the equivalent of a ‘Dead Boy walking’.

As I matured my fear of the unclean would be compounded by a need to wash and purify. I subjected my hands to endless episodes of vigorous of scrubbing that invariably caused them to chafe and redden. This was my remedy for coping with the infection that on its most diabolical level seemed so very real. Thankfully my mom could see through my actions and coaxed me to quit through a well-posed mixture of delicate reprimand and necessary empathy. My OCD would subside briefly, choked back but waiting behind the door to pounce should the next opportunity present itself.

In a sense OCD is a cunning beast in that it seeks the lowest level of your mental being and then strikes with brazen cruelty. Any doubt that it can latch onto becomes fair game. Once the intrusive thought worms its way into your head and escapes the initial check it stays there clawing at any contentment and magnifying its presence with the immediate passage of time. It can consume and it will for it is resilient.

The only respite, at least in those early days was rest, a clearing of the mind and a retreat to a cerebral space that it could not penetrate. There is an urgent need to re-focus, and I learnt how to do this, while eagerly waiting for the return of some facsimile of peace of mind that at the moment seemed extremely remote