Dogmatism is the refuge of the simple, and leads, ultimately, to a destination of failure. To be dogmatic, is to be inflexible, to refuse to see the whole where it conflicts with our existing perceptions. We laugh and express derision over the Islamic threats upon Salman Rushdie and the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten - clearly, being motivated by unthinking dogmatism, accepting no challenge or question of their view of Islam.. and yet, are there times where we, as conservatives, are just as inflexible?
Are we so certain, for example, that our abject refusal to consider and understand the motivations and interests of Hamas can have no place in seeking a solution to what has, so far, been an unsolvable problem? That opposing terrorism must equate with unquestionable support of Israel? I would suggest that is no more the case than looking upon the tragedies in Ghaza as being an act of the Israelis, free of any contribution by those in Hamas and other Islamic extremists who pursue their own "Manifest Destiny" without regard to the harm they do to their own people.
Viewing BBC News this morning, I was fascinated by an interview with Aaron David Miller, a foreign policy advisor to the U.S. state department for the past 25 years, both Republicans and Democrats.. and a good reflection of the tenor of that interview is available in his Newsweek Article here.
Essentially, Miller suggests we need to change the way we address the problems in the middle east, stop worrying about appeasing the insecurities of Israel, and move forward in a constructive manner,which, in some respects, requires us to take Israel to task - particularly if the west is to have any legitimacy in the middle-east. In his interview with BBC today, he comments that we have to sit back and re-evaluate our position in Afghanistan, and look at the situation from the position as it is, not as we wish it were.
In Canada - rather than fall into the camps of "get out of Afghanistan now" or "pursue the establishment of a democratic Afghanistan state" - perhaps we need to do the same. Why are we there? And even if our goals are valid and laudable - are they realistic? I suggest they aren't - sadly, there is insufficient political will of the Afghan people themselves, insufficient support for the ideals of gender equality and free expression.. and as such, we need to see the world as it is, not as we wish it were.
Albert Einstein was, clearly, a genius. And part of his genius was taking a complex principle, and expressing it simply. E=MC2.
Albert Einstein distilled another concept quite simply - insanity. On that point, he defined insanity as:
doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
11 comments:
Good post.
The problem with ideology/religion/dogma/isms is that they inevitably require bending reality into knots in order to fit within doctrine.
The world just does not work like that. And when anyone tries to force it to, conflict results. One does not have to look deep into the history books to find a litany of examples of precisely this.
Look at what's going on with this global warming garbage. It's become an ideology in own right, bordering on religion/cultism. The crap that's spewing forth from these raving extremists should scare the hell out of any sane person.
It never ends, eh?
Thanks Springer.. I agree, Global warming is another example - where, probably, we can learn to dismiss dogma on each side of the political spectrum..
The religion of "climate change" as espoused by David Suzuki, and more recently, National Geographic's depiction of the oil sands projects.. refuses to, firstly, acknowledge the real dependancy our economies, and therefore, our standard of living has upon oil production - and that compromises have to be made - particularly where so much of the world, particularly, Russia, China, India and the U.S., are not, themselves, committed to hampering their economies for environmental purposes..
At the same time, my read on the climate issue - is that good scientists take the position that it is possible that we are contributing to climate change, and that while the alarmists do damage to true science by exaggerating their ability to make predictions based upon climate models, neither is it wise to completely discount the issue either..
Some sanity must prevail in the middle.. regardless of climate outcomes, reducing dependance upon carbon-based energy production has many, many positive attributes - but, in our drive-through, McDonald's society, people want everything easy and handed to them in a neat little package.
As you say - the demand for easy answers is so often what creates conflict and lack of progress.. one hopes that, at some point, we cease to be collectively "insane" as described by Einstein.
Wrote a column on my site a while back about this global warming stuff.
Available here.
There's a book out, called "Red Hot Lies". Sure is a wake-up call.
It is correct that for Afghanistan to be a 'democratic society' there must be a willingness on the part of the Afghani people.
However, I seem to recall that the USA and NATO went into Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in response to 9/11. The idea presumably to destroy these terrorists and any capability they had to export Terrorism.
If this early goal has not been met and I do not think it has, what do you see as a realistic course of action?
To me it seems reasonable that if we are not prepared to defeat Terrorism overseas our options may be to either create a Police State to deal with it at home or to surrender and change our societies in accordance with Terrorist world views.
RT - point taken - but, realistically, we're not going to "defeat terrorism" by engaging in a never-ending war, where the populace isn't solidly alligned against the extremists.. which is obviously the case in Afghanistan and Iraq.. which is also complicated by the persistent attitude we take towards the conflict in Ghaza as alluded to in the Miller article referred to..
No easy answers, but perhaps the notion of "exporting freedom" is a concept that must be re-examined, and perhaps there is some truth to the notion that the drive to do so is what truly puts us at risk..
It's sort of like during the cold war - there was this fear of immenent Soviet attack.. the reality was, and I was in the Soviet Union in '79 - the people were only kept in line by the fear of attack on them and reminders of the massive losses they sustained in WWII - the real change wasn't Ronald Regan, it was the people finally overcoming their fear of the West and understanding the oppression of their own government - the Soviet experiment fell from within - it wasn't broken from outside.
So with Islamic extremists.. the great middle is only kept onside by fear and anger over the suggestion that the U.S. is engaging in the new "Crusades".. I have a suspicion if a more neutral roll were takin in Israel, and we backed off, the extremist "experiment" would also die from within..
COuld be worth a try.. instead of doing the same thing, and expecting a different result :)
Springer - good post.. and I've read all of that as well, and agree that the alarmism is truly out of control.. but, to be fair, I've tried to examine both ends as deeply as possible, and many of the truly neutral scientists, those who have signed the Oregon Petition for example - don't necessarily say it isn't possible - they just say, the science is too inexact.. my point being, in the chance that some of their theory is correct, there's no downside of a gradual move to reduce reliance on carbon based power.. but the rush to destroy our economy based upon such speculative theory is truly madness, and will cause real hardship and pain in the lower income portions of our populations - the kind of pain that David Suzuki feels comfortable in ignoring.
Oh - and truly RT - another 9-11 or two and the support for liberal softness on people like Khadr would evaporate in an instant.. witness Israel.. they live in the den of the viper and still manage a relatively democratic and free society..
interesting thread. i certainly don't pretend to understand the science of climate change and i suspect that the limitations of human understanding aren't really equal to the task of making accurate predictions. all i have are anecdotal observations from my own experience which, in planetary terms is less than a blink in time. i think the global climate change proponents do themselves and the rest of us a disservice by making grand claims based on models. on the other hand, the denialists do an equal disservice by dismissing the threat out of hand.
i prefer simpler ways of looking at complexities and solutions. my basic understanding is that pollution is bad. the blunt refusal to address the sheer scale of pollution is foolish. clinging to a disgusting mess like the tar sands is utterly insane. yes the current regional economy is tied to it but we need to remember that the reliance on petroleum is a fairly recent phenomenon. the culture of the car is only a hundred years old. we are not incapable of altering social paradigms. and those changes do not spell the end of civilization else we would all have perished with the collapse of the buggy whip industry.
the tar sands are a short term boon and a long term mess. that industry is blazing through enough natural gas to provide the heating needs of 3 million canadian homes. expansion plans i've heard predict a seven fold increase in production. that would flash through enough natural gas to heat more than 20 million homes. basically almost all of the heating needs of the country. and why, because we are unwilling to look at any other options lest the foreign multinationals lose an easy buck.
the environmental remediation costs that will be faced in the tar sands are going to be beyond astronomical. we do have other options. as for economic impact, i for one am tired of the whining that doing without the toxic mess is the end of all things. what ever happened to resourcefulness, innovation and invention. i'm an artsie leftist sort but i'm not immune to an interest in prosperity. for example, home heating in our northern country is achieved through fossil fuels or electricity in the vast majority of homes. why? because that is the current paradigm and it has worked okay so far. but the price will not remain affordable for long. once the natural gas used to crack bitumen goes up seven fold do you really expect your heating bill to be unaffected?
as an entrepreneur, i wish i had the skill set to implement the sure fire multi-million dollar boom on the horizon. a friend of mine, an engineer, is now using home made passive solar panels to provide three quarters of his home heating. another acquaintance went through zoning hell and nimby wars to put in a geothermal heating sytem in his custom home about fifteen years ago. now the neighbours that screamed about the drilling rig are on his door step asking about retrofitting their own places. want a million dollar biz, geothermal is clean, safe and sane tech. the initial carbon footprint of the concrete and drilling is more than offset by the long term savings.
as for afghanistan, my granny was born in what's now the pakistan/afghan frontier. i am the child of colonial britain, my old man was born in india and served in the royal corps of engineers for more than twenty years mostly in north africa and the middle east. his thoughts on remaking afghanistan in our image, you wouldn't like his choice of words and he was anything but a liberal. we are on a fool's errand there. we cannot force change upon them and they are more than used to death and privation. they will outlast the western will to dispose of wealth and materiel in the region, ask the russians. their folly in the area did a damn site more than ronald reagan ever did to undermine the soviet system.
we had a window of opportunity in afghanistan that closed with bush's opportunism and shift of focus. the popular will to change in afghanistan was wasted, we have no credibility there any more. we made promises that we did not keep, we offered hope that was not fulfilled and now it is only a question of time before our will to continue evaporates. if a fraction of the amount of cash, energy and effort wasted on iraq had been spent on the basic infrastructure, education and economic needs of afghanistan we would have seen a much different outcome.
in all truth it is the hearts and minds that need to change. they will not change by force and broken promises. in the wake of the initial fall of the taliban we had nearly no popular opposition. the people were ready for some change and we failed them by our own arrogance and by the diversion of resources to the shit mire that bush wanted so badly in iraq. that won't be changed now, after nearly a decade of floundering. we have not made the lives of the locals better. we have not given them a working alternative to the religious maniacs that have kept their influence in the area. unlike an alternative home heating idea, i have no working plan to fix what we've broken there and neither does anyone else, left, right or middle. stay or leave, we've made long term enemies in the region and for every crazed jihadist we kill (to say nothing of innocents, children and civilians) there are two more ready to take up the cry.
there's no easy or good solution to the problems that we've made there.
I appreciate your input psa, so much more personal than the talking heads that the rest of us are..
And sadly, I think you are right.. hence my thought that rather than trying to force a solution that won't work - perhaps we back off - provide aid and assistance, but keep our noses of of their own development, Taliban or otherwise.. and let the people grow weary of religious fanatacism, thought, sadly, that's probably going to take generations..
..and I also agree with the idea that geothermal heating has a lot more potential than we currently are giving it credit for. I hate to admit, but we had made an offer on a geothermal heated and airconditioned home last year, and then decided to build a house, and decided against the $20,000.00 added cost for geothermal.. however, perhaps if the government put the stimulus, just for example, into significant funding for geothermal heating and air conditioning, that might prove to kill two birds with one stone.. reducing reliance on fossil fuels, and, also, giving a boon to a new industry.. in fact, there may be a point in looking at broader applications - in Denmark, there are two geothermal power plants, and are communities that are wholly heated and have hot water provided by geothermal energy..
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