In the hypothetical emergence of a primitive tribe from the jungle, the tribe members optimize their existence according to their own personal sense of hedony and well being.  It may not be  particularly encouraging to the onlooker, but neither does it affect the state of the world in a very negative way, other than the welfare bill. And if one of the goals of the fourth and successive industrial revolutions is increased leisure, the tribe is in the vanguard of progress.

Introspection might reveal that your discomfort with the couch potato fate of the primitive tribe is the result of widely shared cultural prejudices, springing from the same well as the Khmer Rouge and ISIS drives to perfect societies at any cost. With the window-dressing of specific beliefs peeled back, there are two poles.

• The couch potato society is one pole, permissive, undemanding, and unconcerned with the aesthetics of existence.
• The opposite pole is ruthlessly composed of perfect virtue, where virtue is an arbitrary standard of some time, place, and people who say what it is.

The two poles, couch potato and virtue, are connected by a continuum.  Depending upon your personal cultural standards, you can pick any starting point along this line, and by weakening, strengthening, or removing prejudices, progress to a reductio ad absurdum at one of the poles. For most of us, the starting point is closer to the couch potato pole, which we look upon with sad but tolerant eyes.

But at various times and places, and currently in the Middle East, the starting point is closer to the pole of virtue.  The surviving western correspondence  is the Protestant Ethic , transformed to a secular cultural prejudice and, according to Max Weber,  part of the combination that gave rise to capitalism.

So  we are freighted with prejudices and concerns about humanity that extend beyond the individual to the society as a whole, and perhaps species, connected by a continuum to  ideals of virtue that vary according to the time and place. We share the continuum with Khmer Rouge and ISIS. They are mad and we are sane, but for the greater part of history, the lines of distinction were drawn differently.

Karl Popper’s piecemeal change, conceived in the context of a malleable society, guards against this instability, but at a cost of reduced power and scope that was not apparent in 1945, when planetary limits were  the theoretical of Malthus. Piecemeal change now means between 6 and 23 feet of ocean rise. Some futurists predict other changes unrelated to planetary stress, but competitive in severity, such as the technological singularity, which has a median predicted date of 2040. Preceding this event, Klaus Schwab’s “The Fourth Industrial Revolution…“, may be accompanied by an acute breakdown in the distribution of wealth in the developed countries.

The specialty of this blog, by which I think it has a valuable distinction, is open source intelligence; predictions, not prescriptive solutions. The preceding discussion sums to the prediction that Karl Popper’s piecemeal change, which has served so well to protect the individual from extremes of thought, will be inadequate to deal with the future stressors on both humanity and the planet. The replacement will be global optimization, where “global”  is a math  not the globe of the earth, but mathematically,  “everything considered.” The alternative future  is widespread breakdown.

Global optimization is dangerous. It allows all the sins of the 20th century isms, the Khmer Rouge, and ISIS to boot.  Perhaps some theorist with Popper’s humanity will devise a way to make it safe. But at the very least, it requires a shared understanding of what is to be optimized. Currently there is none; it lies spread out on the continuum between couch potato and virtue. We do not even have consensus on the relative importance of:

• The individual’s subjective happiness.
• The regard of society for the individual.
• Culture and other characteristics that might have value greater than zero. This cannot be assumed.

These questions may cause private unease as well. Perhaps quantization  of  human welfare offends. It has already been done with No Child Left Behind and sea level rise predictions. But even if the eventual decision process is a qualitative blend, the exercise of a purely quantitative approach forces a confrontation with the continuum that spreads between the poles of couch potato and virtue.

Next: The future, ethics, and choices.

While Popper’s book was still Brand New and Important, Saloth Sar, a Cambodian, was studying electronics in Paris, but also soaking up French Marxism. Harmless as mere talk in European cafes, it mutated into virulence in Cambodia, where it became known as the Khmer Rouge. Motivated in some way that could hardly be called humanist, Saloth Sar, with the new name of Pol Pot, devised a program of social change via genocide that would cause the deaths of about a quarter of Cambodia’s population.

Genocide in Cambodia for the purpose of social change is no longer on the world’s plate of problems.  The fanatics of ISIS genocide may think  their purpose has nothing in common with Cambodian communists, but it does. Both exalt species immortality of a human species in the context of a particular organization. The individual, who is mortal and not very long-lived in the best of circumstances, is sacrificed to this greater good, creation of an immortal, ideal society. That the Khmer Rouge were atheists, and ISIS followers religious fanatics, is window dressing for the central, hidden idea of human perfection.

The idea is most clear when expressed in the crudest possible terms: to perfect the race at the cost of the individual. In Soviet Russia, the new man was to be created, with the fallback method of extermination. In Nazi Germany, the primary tool was extermination. That Stalin’s numbers rival those of Hitler show that the distinction lacks importance.

But the idea that the human race could or should be improved lives on, in both modern  and atavistic forms. History suggests it is dangerous, but facing the future as-is may be more dangerous still. So it lurks in the backs of our minds, as an inchoate, unformed notion of “what if?” The most important consequence of its existence is a question: What is the meaning of a “better world”?

When Pol Pot condemned the Cambodian population to a meager pastoral existence, with no more promise than the possibility of reproduction and death at forty, he may have subconsciously confused the evolved optimization of the human organism to environmental conditions that promised no more than this, with what the individual of free will actually wants.

Piecemeal change protects us from horrors, but most mistakes remain possible. It is still all too easy, even within Popper’s framework, to set the wrong goals.

Under primitive conditions, in most area of the world, under the pressure of natural selection, man was biologically and mentally optimized to survive in an environment that so challenged survival till age thirty, there was no time for fancy thought or the urban degeneracy identified by some moralists and theologians. The myth of pastoral bliss or purity is the response. In gentle form, the myth is given body by Henry David Thoreau, in the book Walden.

The reality is hardly gentle. A few years ago, one of the few surviving hunter-gatherer tribes of the Brazilian Amazon rain forest emerged, took residence on the edge of a town, signed up for welfare, and told their stories. One woman related that life had been hard, and her feet had hurt constantly. This particular tribe was happy to abandon their primitive way of life for an indolent, dependent one. And who can say they were wrong? Evolutionary and/or cultural adaptation to an environment is not identical with individual comfort or purpose.

There is a charming story from the animal world that avoids some of the stings of political correctness. An orca whale, a “killer whale”, was left over from the 1993 filming of the movie Free Willie. After the movie was filmed, Keiko the real-life orca was consigned to a very small pool in a Mexico City marine mammal park, where he developed sores on his back and other ailments.  From Keiko’s physical condition, we might assume a severe case of animal abuse, as has been documented by the perverse and deadly behavior of orcas in other parks, notably Sea World. But Keiko had compensations. The park offered “swim with Willy events” for children. Keiko appeared to love his tiny companions, and would help them out of the pool.  It is said that between Willy, the children, and his trainers, young women, there was a strong emotional bond. One trainer called him the best friend she had ever had. In his spare time, which was most of the time, Keiko apparently enjoyed watching cartoons on a TV.  His physical condition was poor.

Keiko’s life resembled that of a couch potato who you wish would get up and walk, but is actually more contented than you are. His physical condition motivated the most widely publicized effort to rehabilitate an orca and return it to the wild, to a life for which his bodily form was optimized by evolution. No expense was spared by the Free Willy Foundation. He was transferred by airplane to  a pen in Iceland, where the most sophisticated efforts were made to make a wild animal out of a brain whose plasticity had wrapped itself around a  completely artificial existence.

Upon final release, Keiko swam all the way to a Norway  fjord, where he was discovered by children playing on the docks. He was recognized by a little girl, who whistled the Free Willy theme song, greatly exciting him. He languished at the docks, rolled on his back begging for food, and allowed the children to climb all over him. When it became clear that Keiko would die if not fed, the locals instituted a program  to sustain the whale, while limiting social interaction. Several years later, he died of a disease shared by both species, the flu.

Having partaken in human existence, which is mentally richer than orca existence, Keiko could not adjust. His mind  had become partly human. Transfixed by the evolutionary perfection of the orca’s morphological adaptation to  environment, Keiko advocates may not have noticed that the lives of the mind and the body, even of orcas, are separate. Popper’s piecemeal change did not prevent seriously messing up the happiness of one whale.

There is a human analogy of didactic value. Consider a primitive Amazon tribe of hunter-gatherers, who move ceaselessly on bare feet to acquire minimal sustenance. Their lives are so hard as not to permit indulgences, which cannot be found or bought. And if found or bought, there is no time for them, for they must keep moving ceaselessly, and with luck, reproduce, until death at 35.

One day, they come out of the forest, sign up for welfare, acquire TVs, and discover that modern recreational drugs are even better than the Amazon pharmacopoeia.  They watch TV, cartoons and reality shows, and get stoned. They die at age 40, from drug abuse and general decompensation.

Which is better?  Take note of every ethical assumption you make, for this is the value of the question.

To be continued shortly.

Dear Friends in Spirit,

The basis of the Renaissance in humanism, rediscovered from Greek philosophy, is a thread that carried over into the modern period, flowering in the Belle Époque/Gilded Age of the late 19^th century and early 20th. It survived the punctuations of western religious rivalries, with triumphant flowering of the science of psychology. The work of William James, so scrupulous and relevant in the study of mental life, has current application in the effort of Henry Stapp to bring the mind-body problem into the realm of physics. Stapp’s breakthrough (made plausible by Roger Penrose) is a synthesis of James and John von Neumann, permitting free will to exist in what naively appeared to be a deterministic world that formerly had no room for an efficacious consciousness. This is good news for humanists.

This recounting is not as historians or philosophers would tell it. It is a brief history of the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, ignored in chronicles except as a curious artifact. It requires the concept of the group mind, mostly unexplored except as “crowd behavior.” Perhaps some future science will validate the notion that each of our minds unconsciously participates as a primitive element of a supra-mind – and perhaps more than one, simultaneously. But let’s not wait.

The intellectual warmth of the period, which continued until the 28^th of July 1914, is remembered by such lights as Freud, Jung, Sartre ( a little later, but inheritor), Marx (the first sociologist, though a bad one), Engels, and many others. The ensemble was expression of a kind of intellectual hubris. Since man was the measure of all things, he could control of his destiny. Freud and Jung could cure the mind; Marx could systemically remake the man; Sartre gave the task to the individual. Cubism visually expressed the ability to reassemble and recreate the environment. Futurism combined visual art with philosophy of violent overtones. Of these, it was most prescient. Hard science, more resistant to hubris than philosophy, is not part of this discussion.

These thought processes were mostly extinguished in 1914. The elegance of Belle Époque thought has gently faded as flaws were found. Freud and Jung, discredited in medicine, survive mainly in literary tropes. Sartre became a mark of culture, not existence. James survives, yet few elaborate. But in the wake of the Great War, the same hubris gave rise to Fascism, philosophically the opposite and practically the twin of Marxism. In the downfall of the isms, with capitalism the current survivor, the hubris that gave rise to the great and flawed theories of social change gave way to skepticism enforced by scientific objectivity.

In the interwar periods, even without the prescriptions of great “isms”, governments still had problems. In the west, politicians were and are the fixit guys. For the most part, they do their work without a lot of philosophy. Some of the results have been quite impressive, such as the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, and the EU. And western societies continued to evolve in a manner significantly independent of governance, completely unanticipated by the isms, whose proponents seemed to have taken Spengler too seriously.

Karl Popper saw the devastation of the “isms”, and the success of the New Deal. The Open Society and Its Enemies, published in 1945, was his response, with a call to replace the “holistic change” embodied in the “isms” with “piecemeal change”, sparing the individual, and obviating the motive for the state to extend to societal domination.

To be continued shortly, on the limits of piecemeal change.

Reuters dateline, Wed Jan 13, 2016 1:55am EST: “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards question U.S. sailors, dismiss talk of prompt release” Quoting,

“If, during the interrogation, we find out that they were on an intelligence gathering mission, we will treat them differently,” Guards spokesman Ramazan Sharif said in an interview with Tasnim news agency.”

This is the possibility considered in U.S. Sailors Held by Iran, with Iran’s diplomatic corps,  the voice of civil government,  contradicted by a religious voice, in this case a military force,  the IRG (Islamic Revolutionary Guards).

It has been suggested that the IRG, which has evolved into a complete military-industrial complex that controls a huge portion of Iran’s economy, has become more powerful than the theocracy. So if the U.S. sailors are detained, the origin of the detention has these possibilities:

• The detention of the American sailors past the expected release time originates with the IRG, who are dissatisfied with the nuclear deal.
• It originates with the hard line theological faction, of whom Yazdi is the preeminent representative.
• It  is collusive between the two.

Yazdi is aging, yet fit, and  recently ascendant in the Council of Experts. There are concerns for Supreme Leader Khameni’s health. It is a typical pattern of the aging autocrat to attempt to fortify the system against change, such as the election of a more liberal Supreme Leader.

This provides the background for Yazdi’s instigation. But it remains speculation without human intelligence, which is very hard to come by.

A unique feature of Iran’s factionalism is an incompletely unified foreign policy. Each pronouncement, posture, position, or goal of Iran’s civil government is subject to contravention by the theological government.  The  magnitude of rivalry between these two structures, and factions that operate under their umbrellas, combined with structural stasis, has only one historical precedent. By the specific design of Adolph Hitler, the German power structure was divided into fiefdoms that he could manipulate and control more easily than a monolith.

Other historical situations may rival, such as the period of the French Revolution, but without the stasis of Iran, where the fiefdoms are partly encoded in law, and, in 37 years, tradition. Quoting CNN, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest stated,

“Certainly, everybody should be aware of the fact we have been in touch with the Iranians and they have assured us that our sailors are safe and that they’ll be allowed to continue their journey promptly.”

Whether this happens provides a momentary sample point of factional struggle inside Iran.  In Saudi breaks relations with Iran, I wrote,

An ayatollah to watch is Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, whose views are so extreme as to be horrible by Western standards. He is not generally popular, but the labyrinthine power structure facilitates powerful, albeit indirect, projection. His position would be enhanced by violent conflict.

Yazdi is 83 years old, but ascendant. In March, he was elected chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which chooses and can remove the Supreme Leader, currently Ali Khameni. Khameni is considered by many to be weak in religious qualification. The structure of Iran’s government, and the fact that it has a Supreme Leader, is largely a consequence of Yazdi’s influence during the formative period after the 1979 revolution.

The currency of power in Iran has multiple forms. The most unusual is distinction as a religious jurist. Because Yazdi is much more distinguished as a jurist than Khameni, Yazdi possesses a currency of power that Khameni, who holds the office, does not.

This is why the release (or not) of the U.S. sailors is so significant to Iran watchers. It provides a minimal degree of insight into the the current interests and balance of power between the civil and theological factions of Iran’s government.

Portrait of a Spaceman, and six

related paintings, are on display at the offices of the School of Visual Arts, NYC, 380 2nd Avenue, 8th floor, until January 29. This is Building 4 on the campus map.

The entrance is located on the southeast corner of 2nd and 22nd. You do not have to pass through security to view the paintings, and I.D. is not required.

On 1/10/2016, at 10:10 a.m. EST, the CNN front page displays an article link, “U.S. bomber flies over DMZ”. The article itself quotes the United States Pacific Command to state, “A B-52 bomber jet from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam flew over Osan, South Korea, on Sunday “in response to a recent nuclear test by North Korea,” United States Pacific Command said. ”

Note:

• The distance between Osan and the Demilitarized Zone, the “DMZ”, is, at the shortest, 50 miles.
• Osan is south of Seoul.
• A flight over the DMZ itself would be an act of war.
• There was no act of war.
• No other media made this mistake. It originated at CNN. It was not a careless copy.

This is not a one-off for CNN, who have an unusual attraction to the phrase, “the next war will…”, where the text anticipates not a brush war, but a major conflagration that would leave a good part of the world in a bad state, if not ashes.

CNN have absorbed too much of William Randolph Hearst. The headline, “U.S. bomber flies over DMZ”, is a classic example of yellow journalism. Quoting Wikipedia about Hearst,

Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and engaged in a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer‘s New York World that led to the creation of yellow journalism—sensationalized stories of dubious veracity.

Joseph Pulitzer was a good guy. Hearst was not; he was a rich guy. There is a difference.

CNN, even with your thirst for profits, you can do better.

Reuters. North Korea says successfully conducts first H-bomb test.

This is total nonsense. All successful hydrogen bombs are derivative of one element: the Teller-Ulam design, which is a method of coupling the energy of a fission “bomb” to a mass of heavy hydrogen (deuterium), so as to initiate nuclear fusion, the “energy of the sun.” No alternative to this design element exists.

It’s very hard to do. In building a nuclear weapon, there are intellectual levels. At one level is what is commonly known as “technology.” For example, the machining of plutonium, which is mechanically unstable, switching spontaneously between different allotropes, is difficult. Construction of a power supply to detonate an implosion array is also difficult. But the most difficult part of these achievements is the first time. The construction of a fission weapon is, as proliferation has shown, a replicable achievement.

The higher level, the stuff of genius, is  mathematical physics. The design of a nuclear weapon is not simply the shape of a gadget sitting on a shelf. It is the evolution of the device under phenomenal dynamical forces over several hundred microseconds. With a hydrogen bomb, the problem of intellect becomes acute. For the H-bomb, we had Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam. The Russians had Andrei Sakharov, and the public knowledge that it could be done. The subsequent independent development by the Britain, France, and China may be considered independent, but people talk.

Perhaps North Korean scientists will hear some talk. But the proof is in the pudding. In this case, the stretching of the truth most likely takes the form of putting some deuterium  and tritium gas, or solid compound of, in the center of the plutonium pit. This enhances the performance of a fission pit, reducing the critical mass, facilitating miniaturization. This is  a boosted fission weapon.

Reuters reports the protest of Vietnam with the first military flight to an island in the Spratleys. The inaugural post of this blog,  The Nine Dotted Line, suggested 2025 as a due date for exercise of full sovereignty by China in the delineated area. You may wish to look at the Pivot to Asia series:

• Pivot To Asia, Historical Background
• Pivot To Asia, Cultural Aspects
• Pivot To Asia; Force Projection

The time for a showdown is not yet. China has succeeded in a reprise of the ancient policy of surrounding herself by vassal states, which are at least temporarily paralyzed from action by economic ties. Quoting from Historical Background and Henry Kissinger,

Those dynasties were the custodians of a principle well explained in Chapter 6 of Henry Kissinger’s World Order. Quoting,

“In this view, world order reflected a universal hierarchy, not an equilibrium of competing sovereign states. Every known society was conceived of as being in some kind of tributary relationship…”

An actual tributary relationship of all of the other societies in the world is in the realm of fantasy, but the system nevertheless accommodated. Tribute was replaced by honorific. In some cases, vassals were acquired by corrupting them with showers of goods. Since until the Opium Wars, China had a trade surplus, this was easily afforded. Modern comparisons may bear.

Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Fan Changlong is doubtless aware of that history, and adapted it to modern use. He states (Reuters, 10/17/2015), “We will never recklessly resort to the use of force, even on issues of sovereignty, and have done our utmost to avoid unexpected conflicts”.

This does not imply that China will pay other countries to transit the disputed area while flying the Chinese flag from the mast. But it suggests some input of ancient sophistication that contrasts sharply with the hair-trigger posturing of other countries. It also suggests some realization of the novelty of sovereign claims on a sea.

The eventual cost to China of militarization of the region will greatly exceed the value of the oil that lies beneath. The coastline of China proper is 14,500 kilometers, which is not much less that the U.S. But the geography gives a sense of congestion, with (in Chinese eyes) many potentially hostile neighbors. Sadly, the calculus of threats, discussed in Threats to Russia, also applies to China.

The news media, intentionally or not, exaggerate. CNN, in particular, constantly raises the specter of war. It catches the eye, it raises the blood pressure, and it’s good for readership. It exploits the tendency of the inattentive individual to focus on a single point in time.  With perspective, we can do better.

The engineers who design weapons systems, “weaponeers”, have a saying, “Quantity has a quality all it’s own.” Eventually, China’s numerical dominance in the disputed area will become overwhelming. The U.S. has been concerned about the Iranian development of swarm tactics for use in the Strait of Hormuz. Countermeasures have been developed, but the capabilities and potential of China are vastly greater than that of Iran.

The most likely methods of eventual employment by  China are the fire hose, the boarding party, and the tow rope. An unarmed U.S. “Freedom of Navigation” mission, mysteriously damaged by a mine,  could be on the end of the rope. The Chinese might treat the crew well and after a suitable interval of technology piracy, return the vessel, in tiny pieces neatly boxed.

The softest of military posturing,  combined with claims by China, is all that is required to  to deter commercial investment in competing oil ventures. The risk cannot be annulled by the military postures of other states that are party to this spat, even that of Vietnam, which is the most aggressive.

Vietnam  has a formidable submarine fleet. To use it against China would result in an economic disaster. Such action might result in a brief hot war, as inconclusive as the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979. But titular “victory” would be hollow, as Vietnam’s economy serves mostly as a subcontractor to China’s.

Thus far, China’s policy has successfully progressed towards annexation of most of the area behind the Nine Dotted Line. Like the theologians of Iran’s holy city of Qom, China has a long time horizon. It would be out of character to make the mistake of any action that has less than the ultimate of sophistication.

The 1987 Mecca clash involving Iranian pilgrims has been well documented, particularly by Martin Kramer. An incident in 1986, illustrative of the then-fresh drive to export revolution, has received less attention, but it is mentioned in a Jack Anderson column dated May 24, 1991.

The Saudis were tipped off, and the Pasdaran slaughtered as they attempted to debark the plane with their weapons. The paucity of information, compared to the 1987 incident, seems due to the lack of propaganda value to either side. It is the clearest example of the post-revolutionary drive to export to Saudi Arabia.

For open source analysis, the insight in the current event lies not in that Saudi Arabia has broken diplomatic relations, but in the Iranian reaction to the execution of Nimr al-Nimr.   Iran’s Khameni warns of divine vengeance, but the words are not themselves unusual. What is telling is the mobilization of cadres to sack the Saudi embassy.

It suggests that Iran is still in a post-revolutionary stage, or the Iranian religious establishment is eager to insure that it remains so. Mob violence is a useful exercise, particularly when it exercises the synchronous emotional outburst characteristic of Shiite culture.

In the post revolutionary stage, as in France when Napoleon seized power, there remains the potential to raise a large army, with potential for aggression. The Iranian religious establishment is not homogeneous. There are doubtless some who wish to exercise this potential before Iran’s society has evolved beyond it. An obvious, almost-soft target is Yemen.

An ayatollah to watch is Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, whose views are so extreme as to be horrible by Western standards. He is not generally popular, but the labyrinthine power structure facilitates powerful, albeit indirect, projection. His position would be enhanced by violent conflict.