The Nails That Scratch The World

 I wanted to blog a bit and sort out some thoughts on something that came up in the latest fiction story I read. 

I basically still adore Trash of the Count's Family, but alas I have caught up with everything that has been translated so far. So I went looking for stories that were similar...

I had heard about SSS-Class Suicide Hunter from a couple of places, but when I checked it out the main character seemed kind of meh. 

One of my friends convinced me to give it another go, and I've been enjoying it. 

As usual, here's a spoiler warning. Don't read if you don't want spoilers.

The story has some themes I'm coming to realize are fairly common for novels like this. There's almost a video game element (a dungeon or tower where people fight monsters. Some sort of system that classifies their level and gives them skills, etc). 

In this case there's a tower they're trying to climb (those attempting to do so are called Hunters) and each level of the tower has some new quest or challenge. 

Our main character is a nobody, and he idolizes the top ranked Hunter...

Until he stumbles across his idol murdering another Hunter, gets caught by his idol and murdered in turn.

Okay, if he got murdered how does he become the main character? 

That gets into some of the Tower skills and other such shenanigans. Our main character, Kim Gongja, got an ability that allowed him to copy a skill from whoever killed him. 

Which isn't very useful considering he died, except when the person who murdered you has the ability to regress 24hrs every time he dies.

In other words, the murderous Hunter who killed him had a cheat skill that acted like a save point in a video game. Every time he died, he would go back to 24 hours before his death... and now Kim Gongja had that skill as well.

Watching Kim Gongja's character grow over time is a real treat, especially seeing how he uses his abilities to clear the floors. 

Because he doesn't just do the bare minimum it takes to clear it. He finds solutions that are... so much more emotionally satisfying than they have to be, to be honest.

Anyways, for one of the stages they had to help find a satisfactory ending to a story that would have ended painfully.

That is, a martial arts world was in the middle of a war between the righteous sects and demonic sects ('demonic' doesn't have our christian connotations, and I'm still getting a sense of what that difference means) when a zombie plague appeared. Rather than any sort of satisfying conclusion to their fight, all but two of the martial artists had succumbed to the plague and were now zombies.

I suppose that's enough to get on with this? Hmmm.... no, let me add a little more background.

After starting with The Untamed, watching other shows like Word of Honor, and reading the novels these were based off (as well as others like Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know), I've learned a bit more about the tropes and expectations for stories like this.

Apparently Word of Honor is a wuxia based story... as this article explains it:

 Wuxia – translates at martial heroes. Long, long history of writing in China. Generally, martial artists with their powers boosted to supernatural realms. 

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a wuxia story. They can be a lot of fun, and I'm not entirely sure to what degree their skills are exaggerated. Despite their seemingly impossible feats, though, they're all supposed to come from their martial arts.

Xianxia, on the other hand, is a bit more fantastical.

Xianxia –  is a type of Chinese martial arts novel genre developed from the wuxia genre that is heavily influenced by Daoism and Buddhism (definition taken from Wikipedia). Basically, I translate it for others as Eastern Fantasy. Take wuxia martial artists and add fantasy elements. Anything with gods, spirits, demons, etc becomes xianxia.

Untamed is xianxia, as is Devil Venerable. One of the most common themes seems to be this notion of righteous sects versus demonic sects. 

While I haven't read enough of them to claim any real experties, some of the themes I've noticed tend to be:

Righteous sects claim to be good, but often are hypocritical. Too many focus on the outward appearance of righteousness and cover up the bad things they do.

Demonic sects tend to be 'might makes right' where whoever is the top badass rules, and naturally expects all their subordinates to do their best to kill him/her. On the one hand that doesn't seem like a very comfortable position to be in, and if someone truly terrible is in charge the demonic sects can be truly terrible as well. 

On the other hand there is a level of honesty to their behavior that you don't see in the righteous sects. The members of the demonic sects freely admit their intent to do whatever they want. And can it really be called betrayal if you expect your subordinates to do so any time they think they can get away with it?

Different stories do seem to portray each of these differently, so I'll try not to make any more sweeping generalizations. Anyways, on to SSS-Class Suicide Hunter.

This level is more like a wuxia novel. There are righteous martial artists and demonic martial artists, and they were fighting each other to determine which would control the martial arts world.

The only two fighters who have not turned into zombies are the 'Heavenly Demon' who unified and led the demonic sects, and the leader of the righteous sects.

When you first meet them, they seem... kind of pathetic, actually. The world is overrun with zombies, all their people are dead... and yet they still fight each other? Every day?

They talk about how they have 500 elite martial artists with them, and you discover they're talking about the zombies (and btw, how terrifying is it to have zombies that still can use their wuxia martial arts skills? Flying zombies... yikes.)

You later learn that both have been bitten already, and in order to slow down the spread they're using their skills to block the flow of energy... so they're not able to fight properly.

Even though they're the most skilled martial artists on their side, they're reduced to fighting with twigs and moves that look like a childish spat.

And you have to wonder - what's the point? Why keep doing this, when everyone is dead already? Especially since these two had been fighting each other like this for years, to the point where they almost seem more friends than enemies.

We see a flashback at some point, where we learn that the Heavenly Demon's subordinates urged her to give up the fight. To take their people and flee to some island.

Obviously she refused, and we can assume her opponent was offered and rejected a similar proposal.

It seems ludicrous at first. 

The two most powerful martial artists of their time, fighting each other with twigs while the world ends.

However...

The Heavenly Demon explains some of it...

That as martial artists they all know and expect to die some day.

That the issue is not dying, nor fear of dying. 

The issue is that they want a meaningful death.

Fighting to prove their martial arts are superior is meaningful. Giving your all, and losing... would still be meaningful.

Even getting poisoned is a meaningful death (I assume because it's seen as one of the weapons in the martial arts world.)

Getting bitten by a zombie and turning into one? Isn't...

I'm sure both sides supported trying to find a cure for the zombie plague. We learn about at least some of the attempts, as the story progresses. 

They clearly failed.

And as for running away to an island to preserve some form of life... these are martial artists. Not the leaders of cities or nations. I don't think they have quite the same obligation to try to save humanity.

And so they pretend the 500 zombies (each) that they gather up whenever the light stops them from moving are still part of their forces. Pretend that they're not weak from preventing the zombie plague from spreading in their own bodies. Pretend that they're really using their weapons instead of twigs...

And keep challenging each other to duel, as much as possible given their limitations, in hopes of finding a more meaningful ending. (What's that about John 12:25? 'Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.' )

Our main character does his thing, by which I mean that he goes above and beyond in order to try to find a more satisfying conclusion.

And one of the things he decides to try is to become the Heavenly Demon's disciple. 

Basically, if her teachings are passed on to him then it isn't truly the end. (Especially when one of the Hunters that came with him becomes the student of the righteous sect leader... so the teachings are passed down to both of them and they can continue the battle.)

And this gets at the heart of why I decided to blog all this out.

A completely different martial artist master was educating our main character on some of the differences between the righteous and demonic martial arts:

-In the end, it’s a matter of how you deal with the world, whether it’s with strength or strategy.

‘How I deal with the world?’

-Indeed. If you try to embrace the world with generosity, you usually end up in the Righteous Sect. If you try to ravage the world, that is the Demonic Cult. That is why the people of the Righteous Sect made their bodies into [vessels to accept the world], and the Demonic Cult’s people made their bodies with [nails that can scratch the world]…

Bae Hu-ryeong hmphed and crossed his arms.

-I’ll give you the simplest example. A sword strike that cuts straight from the head to the bottom. In some schools, they call that the Tiger Fury because it is like [a tiger rushing].

Hwik!

Bae Hu-ryeong took a stance and swung his arms down as if he was wielding a sword with both hands.

‘······!’

It was only for an instant, but I flinched. I really felt the spirit of a wild beast charging at me.

It was strong.

...

-Well, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a tiger or a bull. The specifics can vary depending on how the founder or the creator of the move gained enlightenment. Anyway, it’s important to [imitate] a tiger or bull.

Emulate it. Copy it.

Thus, you make something of the world into your own.

That’s what Bae Hu-ryeong meant by vessels to [accept the world.]

-But the demonic arts are different.

Bae Hu-ryeong took a stance again.

It was the same posture as when he previously swung his arms.

-In the Demonic Sect, they say something like this when teaching initiates.

Bae Hu-ryeong breathed in forcefully and stomped his foot.

-Recall your rage, the soreness in your stomach, at the moment a thief stole one of yours.

The empty air in the void split open.

I unintentionally stepped back.

The face.

It was because of Bae Hu-ryeong’s countenance.

His face was blank, but it still emanated an infinitely cold anger.

It was as if he became a completely different person.

-Recall the moment your younger sister was dragged away by the governor. Remember your weakness, your inability to do anything. You waited in front of the governor’s house for the night to pass, but at dawn, your sister returned to you as a cold carcass. Remember her face, and paint it into your heart.

Bae Hu-ryeong began to perform a sword dance.

Even though his hands were empty, somehow I felt as if I could still see a sword. That sword was as black as the space in which we stood.

-Recall when you buried your sister’s body, alone. Was it winter? The ground was frozen and it was hard to dig. Did you dig at the stubborn soil with your fingertips? Did your fingernails crack? Did blood flow from your broken nails?

‘······.’

-In the end, you couldn’t even dig down to a foot. Did you put your sister’s corpse into a pit? Did you bury her feet first? Did you put a pile of cold dirt over your younger sister’s body? You couldn’t bury her in the ground. In the end, did you sprinkle the dirt on her face, one handful at a time?

I couldn’t breathe.

As Bae Hu-ryeong’s sword dance continued, the endless space which we were in seemed to narrow. It was enough to make my head spin a little. It was only the movement of his hands and arms, but Bae Hu-ryeong’s grudge resonated deeply.

-Recall the texture of that grain of soil. Hold your sword with the hand that dug the earth. Swing your sword as you scattered the dirt over your younger sister. Lament your helplessness and blame the cruelty of the world.

I muttered, though it was more like a moan.

‘The nails that scratch the world…’

 

Turn all the pain and misery in the world into a martial art that can change the world. Nails that can scratch, a scream that can pierce...

Take all that suffering and use it to grow stronger. To make sure that the rich and powerful, the righteous sects... nobody can ignore those who suffer.  

On the one hand, if I were to study a martial art I think I'm more inclined to the righteous sect.

On the other hand, I have seen how frustrating it is when the people in charge seem immune to the suffering of others.

They don't want to hear it, don't want to see it... they will use the police to push out homeless people rather than address the root causes of homelessness, and thus people suffer even more.

They will complain when someone interrupts their dinner, talk about 'bad form' or how impolite it is to take a knee at a football game, or yell at a politician right after some butthurt killer murders a bunch of children...

And yet if you stay 'polite', if you just vote and maybe do a protest march or two... they will just ignore everything. Ignore the suffering their decisions enable. 

Oh yes... I see the appeal of being the nails that scratch the world.

And yet, that doesn't seem quite the right answer either.

Aren't the murderers shooting up schools also being 'nails that scratch the world'? Letting out their rage and hatred (I personally think it's unjustified, ofc, but I recognize it's rage and hatred nonetheless) on the world?

Is that not, ultimately, what quite a few terrorists are trying to be?

Perhaps, maybe, it can make some of these insulated and smug fools suffer. 

I want to ponder this a bit more, but I've been typing for a while and this seems like a good stopping point.

I'll continue it later.

International Threats

From this article:

"The DEA had a theory: the upper echelons of global money laundering, terrorism, drug-trafficking and organized crime all bleed together." 

Update, Terrorism vs Insurgency, and Other Topics

California, Washington, and Oregon have apparently announced a pact, and the eastern states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts are creating a regional working group to help coordinate their efforts against COVID-19.

Which is not unreasonable. (This, btw, is why I'm skeptical about efforts to get rid of government. You might get rid of whatever you currently call government, but the need for coordination/administration etc generally doesn't go away, and will take on the same form, albeit under a different name. Maybe you have a private 'mutual aid organization', which you all pay some membership fee to. Whether you call it 'mutual aid' or 'government', a 'membership fee' or 'taxes' it all tends to act the same in the end. But that's for a later discussion.)

But it sets the stage for quite an intense and uncertain future, because Trump (who apparently is now claiming he has 'absolute authority', after declaring "I don't take responsibility at all", and at other times claiming that the federal goverment was just a stopgap to states) is probably not going to take that too well.

Weird, that you can't have it both ways, isn't it? You can't neglect to do your job and then get upset when other people step in to fill the gaps.

But this is Trump, and every time he's been faced with a challenge he doubles down. He's petty and vindictive, and I have no idea what sort of crazy response he'll come up with, but I'm sure it'll be a doozy.

Right now... this has the potential to be a nothingburger, or to be a Very. Big. Deal. Indeed.

I'm not sure which way it'll go, though.

So anyways, here's the thing. The conversation I want to have has more to do with which sorts of things we would want, at what level. Like... public goods vs privatization, county vs. state. vs. federal. That sort of thing. My overall principle is to 'support the lowest level possible' and enable them to come up with their own solutions, but there's a heckuva lot of room to play around in that... and there are reasonable arguments to be made for placing certain things at a national level. (For example - as mobile as Americans can be, it makes sense to have some consistent education standards so that a kid transferring from Arizona to Connecticut - or vice versa - won't be on a completely different academic level.)

But I've got plenty of time to dig into that. Before doing so, I wanted to talk a little bit more about something else.

It's a mishmash of things I've come across over the years, and I'm not going to try and look up every little reference, so please excuse any mistakes.

Almost a decade ago, we were asked "what is the difference between terrorism and an insurgency."

It's a complicated question, hinging on how you define terrorists and insurgents, and I will leave aside that terrorism is a strategy or a tactic that may or may not be used by an insurgency, so it's not exactly a fair comparison. Here goes.

When you have a society, there are many decisions made... about who gets what. How resources are allocated, what laws are passed, and so on and so forth.

And there are always people who don't get what they want.

In a free marketplace of ideas, and a democracy, they can try to work within the system to make the changes they want. They can create a platform, run candidates, try to drum up support (and funding)...

But some ideas don't really catch on. (And - in systems that have ossified too much, or are too autocratic, the system may not be capable of changing, either.)

If this represents a genuine grievance, more and more people may join in... and an insurgency can grow. (In a democracy, it would show in candidates running on certain platforms, winning primaries and political positions at the expense of the establishment candidates. In the absence of a legitimate way of doing this within the system, if the issue is severe enough you may see an insurgency... a competing force for the resources of a government. They won't just be trying to fund military forces, they'll also be taking taxes from areas they control, and trying to take care of the people under their jurisdiction. Just like a government would.)

Terrorism... terrorism starts because their ideas weren't popular enough to catch on. They don't have the numbers. Don't have the support.

So they are trying to build support beyond what they otherwise would have. By doing attention-grabbing attacks, to draw in supporters who may otherwise not know they exist.

And by doing horrific attacks, so that when the government overreacts (and rounds up innocent people in a dragnet operation to capture the guilty), people who were perfectly content to go about their business realize that they can't afford to... and get radicalized, and (they hope) turn to the terrorists.

If they do build that level of support, they can become an insurgency... so there's a lot of crossover. The line between the two isn't always clear (and, well... you can have an insurgency without terrorist tactics, so it's not like this is 'the one and only path' a movement can take. Heck, there are also options for non-violent tactics, or insurgency targeting 'legimate' targets like government offices and military personnel, rather than civilians.)

What I wanted to talk about, though, was about the mindset leading towards terrorism. Because that is also a choice, and it's almost always tied to arrogance.

That is, in a free marketplace some ideas are just not going to catch on. Certain Christians believe that dancing is bad - had a whole movie on that - and yet dancing is still pretty popular, and it's unlikely that there would ever be enough popular support to ban it. Not on a large scale, at least.

But the people who believe this are not going to say "the vast majority of people don't agree with us, so maybe we're wrong."

Nope. They truly believe, in their heart of hearts, that they're in the right. And so they are faced with a choice - privately live their beliefs, and accept that the rest of society will never share them...

Or try to change society. Mayhap even try to force society to do 'the right thing', where 'the right thing' is 'that which I'm absolutely certain I know is best for you.'

Arrogance.

Compulsion. I do think that the Koran had that right, btw - that "there is no compulsion in religion."

If there is a God, I'm fairly sure He (or She) is more offended by attempts to compel people into doing what you think is best, then He is by people doing whatever it is in the first place.

But I digress.

The point is, there's a choice. A point where people either accept that they'll always be some weird minority (of which we have plenty. Amish that drive horses and buggies. Hasidic Jews with their particular styles of dress. Christians who decide to ban dance in their local city or county. Each able to live how they think is best, in their private life... but not trying to impose those choices on the rest of society), or decide that they're right and everyone else is wrong.

And when they - arrogantly - decide the latter, they have to explain away why they're not succeeding like they 'should'. And they'll argue that it's because their opponents are cheating, or lying, or whatever it takes to show that they're right and would win in any reasonably fair contest.

And so it's easy to start justifying doing whatever it takes to put their beliefs in practice.

Deliberately, knowingly, lying? Justified, if it helps defeat those nasty fill-in-the-blank, who have blocked you and opposed you and prevented you from building that perfect world you dream of.

There was a book, some while back, talking about the Wisdom of Crowds. About how, collectively, we can be wiser than we are individually. I think it's somewhat true, with caveats. Further studies showed how people could mess with that 'wisdom of crowds'. Could deliberately try to feed it false information, or skew things in one way or another.

Some do it just because it's fun to mess with people, ofc. Others do it... well, because they have a pre-determined answer that they're trying to force the crowd to choice.

Again, arrogance.

I went into all that because most of what I want to get into... well, it presupposes that fair and open marketplace of ideas, which I think tends to be allow the best ideas to come forth.

But we do need to be aware of the types of things that undermine it.

Of attempts, whether it's terrorism, disinformation, lying, bribing, blackmailing - anything other than a open and honest debate, that is used to arrogantly push a certain answer on the rest of us.

To use my previous pizza analogy, it's that one person who his absolutely certain their favorite pizza choice is the only possible pizza choice, and is willing to do whatever it takes to force that decision on everyone. 

Odd Thoughts and Ramblings.

My post yesterday was originally going to be about something else.  Mostly about the challenges/criticisms of our system today.

That's vague, and broad, which is somewhat deliberate.  It's about more than just 'capitalism' or 'democracy'.  And, as someone who's not really a revolutionary, I don't want to sound like I'm totally against capitalism.  It's more...more that we segregate out these parts of our society and then wonder why people are unhappy.  Lonely.  Isolated.

So, first, the obligatory "capitalism isn't necessarily a bad thing" statements.  The gist of capitalism is the belief that people will work harder when they can see and keep the rewards for themselves.  This is somewhat in contrast with the old feudalistic system.  The feudal lord who took everything from the peasants constantly struggled to motivate his people (and it probably was 'his' people, though there have been feudal ladies.)  The ones who actually loosened up the obligations and let their people keep some of the surplus encouraged trade and growth.  Peasants might earn a little extra that they could sell, which they then turned around and used to buy desirable goods like cloth or pots and pans, or a cow or chickens or something that made their lives a little easier and in some ways helped create even more of a surplus.  So instead of having everything owned by a feudal lord who reaped all the rewards you had people who saw tangible results for themselves if they worked a bit harder.  Sort of a similar thing with privatization...the village commons only worked if everyone agreed on a process for ensuring there weren't too many herding animals grazing on the common ground.  Otherwise they overgraze, the pasture doesn't have enough food for the animals next year, and everyone starves.  But if you privatize it, then if someone decides to put too many animals in his yard then he's the only one who winds up starving.  Also, the financial system can be a good thing.  I kind of agree with the points made in The Ascent of Money.  Access to loans (for houses, school, or businesses) can be a good thing and we do need that.

However.  (You knew that was coming).  However.  No system is an unmitigated good.  There are downsides, some of which are not as much of an issue if social norms account for them.

To go back to the issues with our modern society...these criticisms aren't new.  They aren't even necessarily outsider views.  Some of them are the same criticisms I've heard growing up in Catholic schools. i.e. It can be materialistic, overly focused on shallow and superficial things.  Any time I run into someone outside of the United States, I want to emphasize that the TV shows and movies everyone knows don't necessarily reflect what life is like for most Americans.  Part of why we like them so much is they show a world different from our own, after all.  The United States is still one of the most religious countries in the world, though that's declined a bit.  In 2003, 60% of Americans said religion was "very important" and 23% said it was "fairly important".  That's over 80% who thought it was important to one degree or another.  Sure, pop culture makes it seem like we're fairly secular, but that's more because of the separation of church and state and the understanding that talking about religion in a multi-cultural environment is likely to stir up bad feelings and create problems where you don't really want or need them.  That is, you don't need to go proselytizing to people at work or school, and if you try you're more likely to discover people feel very strongly about their own (different) faith and don't take kindly to you trying to convert them.  You probably have little to no idea what your co-workers believe, or whether they go to church on Sunday, or a synogogue on Saturday or not.  (Unless you must in order to accommodate someone's faith.  We had some Muslim employees we had to give a later lunch hour to during Ramadan, so they could eat after the sun set.)  What's sort of fascinating is that the jihadists who seem so horrified about America often have the same criticisms that our own Christians have about it.  Of course, some of the jihadists seem to see only the college campus atmosphere, which...well...colleges are often when young people break away from their upbringings and go a little crazy.  It's generally the most obvious part of college, but there are plenty of students who choose not to go that route...most campuses have churches that serve the college student community, tough though it is when so many of them leave after a few years.

Anyways.  I mentioned yesterday that happiness generally occurs when we feel socially connected and find some sort of meaning for ourselves.  And yet increasingly we live in a society where we're disconnected, isolated, and have a hard time finding a meaningful job. (and how meaningful is it to work at a McDonald's?  Or get a bad back picking items for shipping every day?  Especially when you know most of the benefits go to some overpaid CEO...and that companies seem to begrudge every extra penny they spend on the bulk of their personnel.)

We live in a society that seems impersonal.  Bureaucratic.  We're all just cogs in the machine, and the machine doesn't seem to care too much about you...if you're not there they'll just find another cog to fill the spot.

It's...dehumanizing.

And we know that it's not like that for others.  That for that 1% at the top, they're not bound by all the impersonal bureaucratic crap the rest of us are.  Warren Buffet, who is probably one of the best of the 1%, talked in his biography about how he went through a period of bad behavior.  Bad grades, stealing from Sears...he was a bit of a delinquent.  He was able to get past that and move on to the person he is today.  I think most of us know that a young black boy with a similar history would have ended up in juvie and graduated to prison.

I think part of the problem is that we pigeonhole these concepts.  Capitalism and business, for example, is a completely separate sphere from our religious and personal life.  So we get a hard-headed businessman who gets accolades for cutting costs, and they can go to church on Sunday and consider themselves a good Christian even if the end result is that wages don't rise and people are struggling to get by.  (I say that, I'm not entirely sure I like where that's going...as I don't really think businesses should  be charities.  I'll think more on it later.  Also, I was startled to realize how similar my comparison of a feudal lord is to our current business system.  After all, the employees whose wages haven't risen faster than inflation wind up with less and less of a surplus to use for other things.)

  

Counter-Terrorism, Oversimplification, Etc.

In college I took hapkido and tai chi.  Even a little bit of push hands.  It's been years since I've done any of it, but some of the lessons stuck with me still.

Push hands is a little bit like an old childhood game.  The one where you put your front foot next to someone else's foot, grab each other by the hand and try to unbalance the other person.  Except, of course, the stances and point of contact are different.

As for lessons learned - first of all, when you're in contact with the other person you can kind of sense where their balance is.  Where they're moving to, and from.  (In the military sense - when you're in contact with the enemy you have a sense of where they're moving to.  It's when you lose all contact that they become unpredictable.)

Second - in push hands, once someone loses balance the other person has control.  If your opponent loses their balance, you control where they go.  In order to win, you need to keep your balance while making them lose theirs.  If they're moving towards you, maybe you should go with it...even aid them in that movement.  Make them overextend.  Then they lose their balance, and you can direct them easily. 

So many people think battle is straightforward.  Attack.  Block.  Swing, block, swing.  A fight like that can easily become about brute strength, stamina, and speed.  It's comparatively simple...and makes you forget that there are other options.  Instead of blocking, just give them a little assist.  As they move farther and faster than they intended, they overextend and lose their balance.  Meeting strength with weakness can do the same thing.  (This is all situationally dependent, of course.)

So Vietnam, for example, could be seen as an overextension by the United States.  We lost our balance.  Funny enough, though, the Soviet Union then overextended in Afghanistan.

I brought this up for two reasons.  First because we all too often get locked into an 'attack/block' mentality.  It's important to remember that there are other options. 

The second reason?  We have to know when we're overextending. 

On a side note - when reading about the spy games during the Cold War it seemed that the Soviet Union regularly kicked our butts.  This may be a misleading impression, since I'm sure there are some things still classified...but the Soviets generally seemed to do better at building their spy networks.  Yet they're the ones that fell apart in the 80's...so apparently winning the spy game wasn't as critical as you'd think.

I'm part of that curious generation just old enough to remember the Cold War without being forged in it...and young enough to adapt to the internet and all the new technology that came out since then.  The logic of the Cold War was very black and white.  And during that time, we misread situations time and time again.  Focused more on communism, for example, and overlooked nationalism.  I believe our misreading the situation caused a lot of damage to our own national security. 

In the last decade or so terrorism has become the new thing...and I see some of the same mentalities.  Black vs. White.  Oversimplification of the issues.  When you see situations through that lens, you are just as likely to misread the situation and propose strategies that backfire.

This bothers me.  I think I hate terrorists as much as anyone, and I don't want them to succeed.  Yet I find, time and again, that the people who ought to be allies seem blindly determined to think in terms of attack/block...to the point where they actually make it harder to fight terrorism.

Hard-heartedness

I wanted to discuss a couple things that seemed only distantly related at first.  Upon further reflection, however, I think both have to do with the human tendency to harden our hearts.  And so I kind of want to begin with a Bible quote instead (for those of you who aren't very religious, please take this as coming from someone who had a religious upbringing and finds it easier to talk about this by drawing on those experiences.  It's not meant to proselytize or convert anyone.)

"Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning." Matthew 19:8-9

Most people discuss this one, rather obviously, when they want to talk about divorce.  Yet I want to discuss the concept of a hard heart more.  So much of the politics of today seem to require hardening your heart in one way or another.  Mostly in self-defense, I think.  After all we've all seen people begging on the streets, and most of us find some reason to ignore them.  (For me, personally, I would rather support a homeless shelter or food pantry that will hopefully be more involved in their lives and make sure my donation is used well.  In other words, I don't really trust the people asking for money on street corners.  Everything I know about the world says that's probably a good thing, yet there's an inner voice that says being able to ignore suffering when it's right in your face is not really what God asked us to do.)

I wanted to tie this in with two different topics.  The first touches on a strain of thinking I've noticed on the right.  I dated someone over a decade ago who once said he thought we should nuke the entire mid-east and turn it into glass.  At the time I ignored it, because I didn't think he truly meant what he was saying and I also knew he was not in any position to actually make it happen.  In other words, idle words by someone expressing an emotion rather than a real policy.  He was condensing an entire region down to a shallow and superficial caricature that he considered a threat, and indulging in wishful thinking.  In reality, any such plan would be horrible.  

Every region of the world has families.  Children.  Women.  Men.  Some people who may be cruel or a threat, and others who are just trying to raise their families in some semblance of peace.  There's an entire field of thought focused on what would make a 'just war', what's considered a reasonable and proportional response, and what he was suggesting was so clearly out of proportion that it wasn't even worth taking seriously.

And yet I hear comments like that, still.  Even worse, we have a presidential candidate who seems to believe the same thing.  What was almost laughable in someone with absolutely no power to make it happen becomes pretty scary when it's said by someone who could.

I understand, to a certain extent, why we harden our hearts like that.  You can't serve in the military, can't make peace with what you are being asked to do (to other human beings, albeit from an opposing force), without finding some way of closing off your empathy.  Hell, I hate terrorists so much sometimes that it kind of scares me.  The things they do are horrible.  I understand why people choose to do so, and yet I think it's in some ways a mistake.  I suppose in some ways I'm influenced by a book I read some time ago, in which the author talked about how prisoners of war were not affected by PTSD the way soldiers were, despite both dealing with awful and traumatic events (with the exception of Holocaust victims).  That part of the reason soldiers were affected was because of the things they did during the fight.  In other words, we harden our hearts to fight a war...but it has consequences.  A part of us knows that what we are doing is done to people who in other circumstances are just like us.  

I, personally, don't like to forget that.  Not because I think we should stop fighting, because if I believe it's worth fighting even knowing that, then it's truly important.  I sometimes wonder if that explains some gender differences I've heard of off and on.  No scientific studies of it, of course, and I hate to say there's a gender difference for sure.  Yet even though men do the bulk of fighting and spying I've heard that the women who get involved are often even harder and more dedicated than the men.  Spying, for example, involves lying and betraying people you are spending a lot of time with.  Time that generally leads to some sort of sense of fellowship.  That's actually really hard to do.  But if you've convinced yourself it's worth doing, worth fighting for, then it's a little easier. 

And so I can say that jihadists are human.  They have feelings, and are trying to do what they think is right.  If they gave up fighting and chose to live a quiet life in peace and security somewhere, I would be okay with that.  Maybe even pity them.  But as a movement, as a belief system that justifies murder, torture, rape and slavery...they are worth fighting against. (And we'd better make sure our own belief system doesn't justify the same sorts of things.)  And that is also why I oppose overly simplistic beliefs that justify hardening our hearts and lead us to say inhumane, stupid, and poorly thought out things like "let's nuke the middle east".

The second, related, topic goes back to my question on modern slavery.  "How can anyone justify doing that to another human being?".  Clearly, the managers and business owners that are dependent on debt bondage and control have hardened their hearts to the people working for them.  Sometimes it's necessary.  Hell, I manage people, I know exactly why and how it's necessary.  You get someone who isn't performing well, and who isn't a good fit, and who isn't really improving despite your attempts to train and develop them, and you have to let them go.  It sucks to know what sort of trauma doing so causes.  The job loss, the uncertainty, the pain of not having any money.  And if they have a family, you know it will cause all sorts of difficulty for them as well.  For children, even.  All you can do is hope that they find a better fit somewhere else, some other place where they can excel and succeed...because they clearly are not doing so where they were. 

We have this image of the good businessman as someone who makes the tough decisions - and yet to make those tough decisions, they have to harden their hearts and ignore the very human costs to the people under their responsibility.  And yet I think there's another way.  I tried finding an article I read years ago, unfortunately all my search terms come up with other studies.  It was a company that ran into trouble and had to downsize.  As my search terms indicated, there are a whole bunch of problems that come when a company lets people go.  The ones who stay are more afraid of losing their jobs, morale suffers, the company as a whole suffers.  So much so that some people debate whether downsizing really pays off.  The article I read said that this company managed to avoid most of the backlash, and they did so by opening up the decision on who to let go to their employees.  The employees met in groups, and their recommendations didn't always have to do with who was the best worker.  Sometimes it was "so-and-so has a family of four that would suffer more if they lost their job".  Yet allowing the employees that level of engagement and control meant the ones that the company as a whole did not suffer as much when they did downsize. 

And so a parallel seems apparent.  Just as a soldier hardens their heart to the enemy, and yet can probably be an effective fighter if they don't (I would even argue a 'more effective fighter', except that the type of fighter I envision won't fight for unjustified reasons...which can cause problems with discipline if you've got leadership that doesn't appreciate that), so a business man or woman hardens their heart to their employees, and yet might possibly be an effective business leader if they don't.  Perhaps even a more effective business leader. 

It goes against the grain, goes against a lot of cultural beliefs.  Just consider the pressure Costco gets for paying higher wages.  Or the backlash against that company that decided to pay it's employees $70,000 a year.

Yet what if the hard-hearted business leader is actually a bad thing?

Destiny Disrupted Mashup with The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power

I mentioned that mixing up a book on the history of oil with a book on why Muslims feel disgruntled with the world as it exists today was interesting...

Interesting, because you switch from a very geopolitical, grand strategy, business mindset to one that is more about...

Religion.  Meaning.  Pursuit of an ideal community.

I have to admit, I am projecting a bit of my own Catholic upbringing on to what I was reading about Islam.  I don't claim I actually understand Islam, but I think I have a better grasp of the appeal than a strictly secular look.

First - what I consider a fairly significant difference.  See, I spent 11 of my first 12 years in school at Catholic institutions.  I am pretty familiar with concepts like the "Kingdom of Heaven", the "Church as the Body of Christ", etc.  But early Christians thought that Jesus would bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth in their lifetime, and when that didn't happen our concept evolved to a more spiritual understanding.  The Kingdom of Heaven is what we will find in the afterlife.  And the whole "Church as the Body of Christ", for me at least, was tied in with what we were taught about the Reformation.  That is, the Catholic Church grew materialistic and corrupt...leading eventual to the Protestant movements and the Reformation to help make some much needed changes.  So my Catholic upbringing talked about how Catholic believers form a community, the 'body of Christ', and that there is a back and forth discussion between these believers and the official leaders of our church. 

Islam is, in many ways, different.  There's no Pope, no formal institution for making clergy.  But there are similarities, as well.  Ways that the religion recognizing who is legitimate and who isn't.  A belief in the community, etc.

So what stood out to me as perhaps the most significant (and new, even though I've studied this topic for years) difference was the notion that Muslims are seeking to create the ideal community in the world.  I immediately thought of it as the "Kingdom of Heaven", but I admit I'm throwing Christian concepts at it.  They're pursuing this not in the mystical, spiritual fashion we Christians have developed...but in a much more real, earthly way.  Part of the benefits of having your founder live and lead for a significant period of time, instead of dying early. 

The appeal of the caliphate is the appeal of building that Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.  And whoo-boy!!!  What an appeal!  You go tell Christians today that you're building a Kingdom of Heaven, and see just how many perk up and take notice.  (They may be skeptical, and may not join, but most will at least want enough of an understanding to decide if they should believe it or not.)

It actually reminded me more of the founding of the United States of America.  If you read about our early history, there was this notion that we were embarking on a grand experiment.  Building a new and better society.  This place where "We the People...in order to form a more perfect union..."  (Though we, in the United States today, are beset by a feeling that we've lost that.  The rich and powerful have taken over, the union is not so much about "We the People" as it is about the 1%...etc. etc. etc.)

Mixing up a book like Destiny Disrupted with a book like The Prize brings home some of the complaints I've heard about our culture.  INTERNAL complaints, mind you.  Complaints I heard growing up, surrounded by that Catholic upbringing.  Complaints that we're superficial.  Materialistic.  Focused on status.  Forgetting that there are more important things in life than  money. 

To a certain extent, I dismiss those complaints because of that upbringing.  Because I know that there are many, many Americans that are concerned with living a good life.  That there are sound reasons for separating our public and private lives, but that if I went and talked to any American about religion or spirituality or whatnot that there would be plenty to talk about.  (Though NOT, thank God, all of them agreeing with the views of Christian Conservatives.  So many of them give religion a bad name.  I probably am influenced, again, by that Catholic upbringing and teachings like Matthew 6:5.  I'm basically skeptical of anyone making too public a display of their faith, because it seems more like they're trying to show off to everyone else how faithful they are...and the truly pious keep it more private.  They live a good life, without any fuss or need to publicize how good they are.)

Yet the book on oil sort of brings the complaints back, because they show how much we compartmentalize our lives.  John D Rockefeller  was a Christian.  Yet the decisions he made as a good businessman were not necessarily the decisions of a good Christian.  (Though given that I only know what I've heard in history, and nobody knows someone in and out, I will not presume to say that he was or wasn't a good Christian.  I just want to say that the decisions he made as a businessman could have been very different from the decisions he made as a Christian.)

Our modern life is more...isolating.  Alienating.  People don't feel like there's as much meaning to it.  The fights over class and wealth are tied into this superficially...because when you're barely getting by on your income it's hard to feel like doing a good job matters.  If you do a good job, all you're really doing is putting more money in the pockets of those who already have plenty...and even if you're working two jobs, you will probably never get to that level of comfort and security.

The fight against terrorism isn't just about fighting a horrible misinterpretation of religion.  It's about providing a competing alternative, one where people can get that meaning and fulfillment, that sense of community so many of us need.

One that shows you can build a 'Kingdom of Heaven' that isn't harsh and controlling, that reminds us all that God's also about mercy and compassion.  (Though allegedly ISIS does that internally, what with providing healthcare and other goods for their community.  Still...from what I hear you don't want to face the punishment for breaking their rules.)

I could talk plenty about my own (competing, alternative) interpretation of what such a society would be like...but that's sort of personal and I don't think anyone else is very interested in it.  It's the sort of thing best done as a discussion over coffee, or late at night.  All that would be a digression.

Main point is - the appeal of the caliphate and anti-Western attitudes goes back to some very real gaps in our society.  Gaps that we, living here, know we can fill in a variety of ways...but in ways that do not necessarily show in the public sphere.

The Prize, Thoughts

I wanted to take some time before posting my thoughts on my recent reading material, partly because there's so much to it.  Once I start, I think whatever topic I begin with will crowd out all the rest.  As I mentioned yesterday, breaking up the reading for this book by mixing it with Destiny Disrupted also changes the perspective a bit, and offers some interesting insights.  Yet if I start discussing that, I will miss some basic points I wanted to make about this book, in and of itself.

So.  Reading this book was a bit like working on a complicated 'connect the dot' pictures.  I already had connected the dots for individual areas, but this book provided a much larger context and scope that helped create a more coherent picture.  In some ways, that meant I was aware of how much was glossed over.  It's over 700 pages of reading material already, so of course they had to gloss over some history. 

What I found most interesting was the way he tied the oil industry to economic recession (and boom).  I had heard the term "oil choke collar" already, and knew it embodied this notion that high oil prices choked off growth because people had to pay more for gas.  What's interesting, to me at least, was that the book made it sound like this was known and widely accepted economics...yet even today news articles make it sound like this is a new and untested concept.  (Or perhaps that's my take on it). 

The thing of it is, I remember hearing about 'stagflation' and what it did to Jimmy Carter's presidency.  And I know all about the Reagan years, and the belief in trickle down economics and that deregulation boosted the economy.  Yet, if this book is to be believed, none of that mattered.  Nothing Jimmy Carter did hurt the economy, nothing Reagan did really helped the economy.  It was all about the oil market. 

I want to emphasize this a bit more, because so much of our political debate is tied in with the belief that it DID matter.  We hardly touch on the oil price at all (other than to grumble as consumers, of course.)  Sure, I heard about the 'oil choke collar'.  In one place.  Maybe I'm just not reading enough economic news?  If this was widely known and accepted, I would expect an entirely different national discourse on the state of our economy.

But perhaps that's also because of the strange history here in the States.  We produce oil.  Yet we consume more.  So the independents of the oil industry have a larger say in what we do.  Sometimes to odd affect - given how crucial oil is to national security (can't fight a war if your tanks and planes are out of gas) you would think conserving the secure supplies in our own nation would be important.  Instead, for a period of time, we actually had tariffs to encourage domestic consumption.  And said it was for national security reasons!!!

I also am pondering this whole concept of 'rents'.  That is, the price of oil (more than any other commodity, perhaps) is so market driven that the difference between the cost of producing a gallon and the retail value of that gallon can be huge.  Can, not necessarily is.  I'd heard before that the oil industry has to spend a lot more to invest in developing new sources, etc.  I know they waste a lot of money drilling dry holes, trying to discover oil.  Plus there's the upkeep to the infrastructure, and labor costs, etc.  I've heard that's part of why state-run oil industries don't stay competitive over the long run.

Yet it's a funny type of expense, because it's the kind of thing that matters in the long run.  In the short run,  if you don't want to spend the money on those sorts of things, the difference between the cost of producing a gallon and the cost it sells at can be pretty large.  So the book focuses a lot on what happens to these 'rents'.  How the oil producing countries wanted to take a larger and larger share of those rents.  How tariffs and taxes in the importing countries can transfer the 'rents' to the pockets of their own governments.

The book did an excellent job of explaining how expensive it is to search for oil.  The argument over who should get what (the essence of politics, according to at least one of my classes) is eerily similar to the arguments over intellectual property rights.  The industries that took on the costs of finding and developing oil should get some profit off it, sure.  Just as one would hope the creators and artists who make something new should benefit and get credit for it.

Yet at some point, it's reasonable to believe that they have earned 'enough'.  That the risks and challenges they faced were well compensated, to the point where they are not entitled to more.  (In intellectual property, there's reason to believe that too stringent a policy will destroy creativity and stifle innovation.  That's why a limit is sometimes set for when those rights will expire.)

If you apply that to the concessions given oil companies, at least at the beginning, you can see why the exporting countries felt like they didn't owe the oil companies anything when they nationalized the industry.  Now you're getting into the murky history of colonialism, nationalism, and whether the country where natural resources are found should benefit directly from the resources within.  There are entire books on this topic, so I don't want to get sidetracked too far.

Another dot connected - I had heard Osama bin Laden was mad at Saudi Arabian leadership partly over how oil was used.  I think he wanted to drive prices up?  Anyways...this book connected a few dots there, as well, as it discussed the "oil weapon" and attempts by oil producing countries to use it.

So oil 'rents' seem to be a key concept here, and one well worth considering when looking at international politics.  Yet there are consequences, too, to gaining too much from the rents.  I recall reading about 'Dutch disease' in some of my economic classes, and though this book never mentioned it by name it did touch on it when discussing the effects of oil on national economies. (Again, this is where the United States would be an interesting comparison study, as a producer as well as consumer.)

All in all, a good book to read with plenty of food for thought.  And it's only part of the story.