Relentless War (First Letter)

Dear Mr. Sound Advice and Analysis Man,
We live in interesting times, where "change" has become a political powerword and diplomacy has become an extended version of Monopoly.
I would like to ask you to analyze a simple sentence my history teacher uttered only recently - "you all will grow up in times of atrocious wars".
War - where? I always hear people talk about tensions between Iran and Israel growing, or how China will soon be able to overcome the US as a global power, or how South Korea and Iran will launch nukes in the future. But how big is the chance of this actually happening? Can you imagine this to be a realistic forecast? If so, what would the implications be? And above all, how can we expect the political map of the world to change in the future?
Best regards,
Michael N., Germ

Dear Michael,
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you that 'change' has now joined the list of hollow 'powerword's used by politicians to garner the support of their constituents. Apparently the almost equally vague word 'progressive' was overly specific in its implications for the supposedly liberal left, and therefore needed replacing with something more abstract and harder to pin down into commitments.


But its easy to miss the positive side of this development. Even if meaningful political terms are still rarely used, except as dismissive insults, the invention of 'Change' reflects an increased dissatisfaction with politics-as-usual, combined with a sense of open-mindedness and optimism about alternative societal possibilities. This combination of traits is exactly what is needed to create a politically engaged population, and in the long term, a better social system. That the powerful have had to start making appeals to 'change', rather than just 'conservatism' and nationalism, is an encouraging development, even if its short term result has been the placation of the public.


Look at that. Two paragraphs in and I've managed to cover your first introductory sentence. I'll skip forward to your request and its subsequent questions.
Lets look at your history teacher's statement - 'You will all grow up in times of atrocious wars'.
The first thing to do is to recognise the redundancy of the word 'atrocious' when referring to war. He seems to be implying, perhaps unconsciously, that war could be anything other than atrocious. This implication is clearly absurd when referring to the use of assault and murder against people. All war is atrocious. The only question is how atrocious it is, and to who.
As a history teacher, it is hardly surprising that he drew his conclusion. War occurs throughout the historical record with such monotonous regularity that historical precedent makes it appear inevitable. After all, the only significant change to war over the past seventy years or so has been the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and its subsequent effects. This development has changed warfare forever, but it hasn't made it go away. Nuclear weapons may have stopped nuclear states from attacking each other, but they have also led to an explosion of proxy wars, state-funded terrorism, increased civil unrest, and the global dissemination of small arms.


But on to your question -'War - where?' My answer is 'War - everywhere.'
This might seem like an unusual answer to give, considering the apparent peace throughout the industrialised western world. But this feeling of peace is not at all reflective of reality. All that it demonstrates is how well war is hidden by our everyday ideological constructs, and how under-reported it is in the news.

To proceed with this answer, I need a reliable definition of war. War's nature is ever-changing, and due to war being a social construct, it is difficult to pin down. For instance, it is practically impossible to define the difference between war and terrorism. But just as Max Weber was able to provide the a reliable definition of the state (as any entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence), it is possible to define war using equally expansive terms. The best definition of war that I could come up with was this: The use of violence by one or more groups to achieve political ends.

Bad. Ass.

Open military conflict is now very unlikely between the world's nuclear powers, and as such, you are rightly sceptical of claims about war between North Korea and South Korea, or Israel and Iran. Aside from nuclear war (which is still an unlikely, but possible event), peace will continue between the governments of the United States, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. It would be excellent if that meant peace could continue, but the majority of war no longer occurs between the standing armies of nation-states.
Which brings me to my next point. Your surprise about your teacher's statement reflects two problems with the way that our society treats war. Firstly, the chronic lack of news coverage related to war, and secondly, the narrowness of war's perception.
The only vaguely well-covered war in recent history has been the Vietnam War. Since then, war-reporting has become sanitised and lazy, resulting in a strange and contradictory style of coverage, prioritising statements by politicians and bland footage of soldiers on patrol. Missing are the pictures - of coffins, of victims, of executions. It is hardly surprising, then, that despite British and American occupying troops fighting two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it still seems strange that you are growing up in a time of war.


War is not the sole domain of western civilisation. Just because things have been relatively calm in the west since the Balkans, doesn't mean that peace is here. A glance around the wider world reveals a litany of violent group struggles: The North-West Pakistani independence conflicts, the Somali civil war, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the Mexican drug war, the Sudanese nomadic conflicts, the Columbian insurgency, the North-East Indian insurgency, the Indian Maoist revolution, the Zapatista revolution in Mexico, the Maghreb regional insurgency, the Turkish Kurdish separatist movement, just to name a few.
There may soon even be civil war within the EU, if and when Russia joins. In a country next door to Germany, Chechnyan nationalists are fighting Russian troops. Come to think of it, there already is a civil war within the EU. The Real IRA killed two British soldiers in 2009, which means that the Irish nationalist rebellion is still technically continuing. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7930995.stm)


But this is not what I mean by 'the narrowness of war's perception'. All of the above are conflicts conventionally considered 'war', in the sense of military and paramilitary personnel waving flags and attacking each other. What I'm referring to is all of the socially normalised group violence used to exercise power.
War - where? War in our own countries.
The first example that I'll use is criminal organisations. When a group of criminals wish to exercise power, they employ violence. At the furthest extreme, this violence becomes gang war, but for gangs to effectively function it has to be business-as-usual for internal matters.
Then there's the police, a group which constantly uses violence against groups of criminals. The 'war on crime' might be a stupid propaganda term, but the police and criminal organisations using violence against each other to exercise power is war. There's even flags, and an us verses them mentality.


While we're on the subject of the police, let's revisit Max Weber's definition of the state - A monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. If the state's existence is fundamentally reliant on violence, then there must necessarily be constant low-level war between the state and the people it rules over. That might seem like an unusual claim, but just look at the constantly recurring phenomena of police brutality and citizen rioting, even within representational democracies. It's just that this subset of war is normalised, because the special rights to steal, murder and kidnap granted to the state are referred to as taxation, lethal force and detention.
Now to your last question. How can we expect the political map of the world to change in the future?
I don't feel particularly qualified to answer that. Technology and politics change so quickly that its hard to say. I could make a fairly confident guess that the world will become increasingly regionalised and globalised, as it has been heading in that direction for hundreds of years.
I would hope that with the world being better informed about politics via the internet and cheaper education, authoritarianism will become less prevalent.

That car sure wont be oppressing anyone now.

A lot of the world's political future is dependent on how quickly fusion energy progresses. Without it, mass resource wars look likely. That is, if they haven't already arrived in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I can't predict what's going to happen, but if this century is anything like the last, then I can guarantee that it will certainly be interesting. Going by historical trends, technology and culture should accelerate in their rate of change, bringing us unimaginable horrors and wonders. Ecology and overpopulation are emerging as the greatest global challenge (I would argue that they already are), but politicians are remaining eerily silent on both matters. States around the world are still rewarding their citizens for having children, and the amount of effort spent on protecting the environment is tiny next to the multitude of sustainability problems heading our way. It seems that politicians are not keen to upset the believers of certain faiths who oppose family planning, and short term employment levels which rely on a growing economy. Unfortunately, these are two flaws in representational democracy that get worse the more children that are born. But more on that subject in another post.
I hope that you found something of value in that.
All the best,
That Guy With the Pretentious Name

The Faith in Logic

Generally speaking, faith is a terrible idea. It is the total negation of logic, and therefore of any serious attempt to see reality. Faith does not inherently deserve respect, even if its results can occasionally be beneficial. Outside the social normalisation granted by the respectful word 'faith', belief without reasoning is known by the less reverential term 'delusion'.
Even with the temporary comfort that faith can provide, it is easy to see that in most cases its effects are rarely inspirational and unifying. More often than not, faith breeds subservience and division - The holy terror of Hell, and the bloodshed of religious conflict.
Faith fuels hatred, fear and repression, whether it be through fundamentalist religions, or through unquestioned ideological doctrine. Faith harms both the terrorised faithful and the persecuted faithless. Worst of all, faith turns potentially sceptical people into unthinking puppets, ready to be manipulated by whoever can claim to represent their own brand of God, morality or nationalism.


But the disapproval of the logical towards the faithful is in many ways an arrogant projection - One bred of the same combination of unquestioning and self-denial that is the hallmark of those they wish to set themselves apart from. Many who think of themselves as logical seem to hold their analysis short of realising that logic is itself entirely faith-based.
The idea that logic is a source of truth is entirely reliant on a few core assumptions ('axioms') to do with perception and cognition. Epistemology, the study of knowledge, calls these assumptions 'self evident truths', but that term is really just a convenient label for beliefs without justifications.
The reason why these truths have to be 'self evident' is that logic cannot muster any external evidence of its own validity. Provide a reason why logic leads to truth, and you are already operating within logic, and therefore employing a circular argument. And by logic's own rules, circular arguments cannot be employed to support anything.
'OK then,' you might counter, 'but we can at least say that logic is more likely to be a source of truth than faith. After all, logic has limitless evidence for its validity, because it always turns out to be correct.' This is all well and good, but the argument for logic now relies on three impossible to verify beliefs - beliefs in probability, accurate perception, and properly functioning cognition.
Like logic, probability provides no reasoning for itself other than the fact that it probably exists. But any talk of likelihood drives the argument into circular logic. This is little better than a Christian using biblical verses to justify his or her belief in the bible.
Accurate perception and cognition are required to accept the evidence in favour of logic. And like probability, these concepts are impossible to externally verify. The only things that we can use to confirm the idea that our senses are conveying reality to us are our senses. The only thing that gives us reason to believe that our cognition is accurate is our cognition. Again, the argument lapses into circularity, and we find that using evidence as proof for logic's validity only shifts the location of one's faith from one place to another.


The uneasy conclusion that one is forced too is that all opinion reached via logic is faith-based, and that logic is as much a faith as any religion. The only difference is that logic replaces holy books and High Theory with its own trinity - a trinity of the unprovable assumptions that perception is accurate, that cognition is reliable, and that probability exists.
Of course, all of this leads to some fundamental questions - If logic really is just another faith, then why should it be trusted? Should sceptics still rely on logic? Does it really have any superiority over other faiths?

Daniel Bozhkov, Darth Vader Tries to Clean the Black Sea with a Brita FIlter, 2000

The answer to all of these questions is 'yes'.
There are certain features which set logic apart from other faiths, that do give it a genuinely exceptional status. The most obvious of these unique qualities is logic's impeccable historical record. Logic stands alone among faiths in that it has never been wrong about anything, ever.
Logic is also unique in that instead of beginning in an awkward combination of faith and reasoning, and then haphazardly trying to reconcile the two, logic begins in total faith, but once this foundation is established, instantly moves into total reason. It is therefore inherently more consistent and reliable than any religion or ideology.
Quite aside from logic's superiority, there is the wider question of whether or not it matters, given that most of us could not escape the parts of us that are logical and faithful, even if we wanted to. It seems biologically hard-wired into us that we will all have at least some involuntary impulse to reason, despite any amount of faith piled on top of it. And it seems equally clear that we have plenty of faith built into us as well. In fact, without faith (excluding faith in logic), life would be literally meaningless, because meaning is itself faith-based, and functions predominantly outside of logic. Even if one managed to escape logic, the only foreseeable alternative would be madness, which is presumably a far less pleasant state of mind.

So how should we treat this logical faith? This faith-based logic?
A scholar whose name eludes me once wrote that mysticism is like the sun, in that it illuminates our reality, but cannot not be looked at with its own light. Perhaps this is a better metaphor for logic. It remains humanity's greatest and most powerful tool for seeing reality, but it is also impossible to turn upon itself and deliver anything but a blinding confusion.
Whatever the case is, logic is still my faith, and I wouldn't chose any other.


Now read this post again, and find the errors in my logic.

Why the Right Cannot Accept Climate Change

Human caused climate change is a reality. According to Peter T. Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman of the University of Illinois at Chicago, 'Over 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation is a significant contributing factor to global climate change' (http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf). This near-complete consensus has come about in spite of brazen attempts by the private sector to bribe scientists as much as '$10,000 each' to undermine reports on climate change (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagenews.climatechange, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/28/climatechange.fossilfuels).


Over time, the reasons for climate change 'scepticism' have shifted. At first, global warming was a total fiction, a scientific mistake, the work of a few over-excited climatologists. As concern grew, the debate shifted to whether there was enough evidence to make global warming worth worrying about. When the evidence stacked up, the scepticism turned to whether factors other than greenhouse gases could be blamed. Sunspots, undersea volcanoes, and historical climate fluctuation were all invoked as possible alternatives, and all debunked in turn. Instead of accepting what was clear to the scientists, the 'sceptics' began to look like blind-faith anti-environmentalists, and posed yet another question: 'Would climate change really be that bad?'.


All of these questions would have been reasonable, had they not already been answered. We can now see that the questions were not so much directed at the scientists than at the public. When the scientists failed to tell the public that climate change was nothing to worry about, that we couldn't stop it, that it might not exist, the climate sceptics did they only thing they could. They strayed into the realm of conspiracy theorists and attacked the scientists themselves, in what they cynically dubbed 'Climategate' (after Watergate, the Republican Party scandal that caused Nixon to resign).


You might recall where this tactic has been used before. It bares a striking similarity to the attempt to push creationism into schools. But whereas Intelligent Design at least masqueraded itself as a scientific theory, climate denial abandoned this tactic, and pushed forward into the realm of antiscience, alleging a deliberate cover-up by scientists greedy for funding.
When the Associated Press, FactCheck and the United Nations all concluded that the emails proved nothing, and the scientists explained the few scattered, de-contextualised quotes that appeared only slightly suspicious in any case, they were conveniently ignored.


With the facts on the table, climate sceptics are faced with a choice. They can join the ranks of the tinfoil hatters and insist that a vast conspiracy of scientists, media outlets and governments are conniving against their own best interests, or they can face facts and accept that man made climate change is a reality, and that no amount of belief will change it.


But of course, they wont. Even as the ice melts, the water rises, and extreme weather events intensify, the supposed sceptics continue to blind themselves to all reason and all evidence.
Because of this irrationality, one can only conclude that these 'sceptics' have no interest in reason and evidence. They do not want to see what is so clear to the rest of the world. And from this conclusion, a question emerges. The question of why? Why is it that these sceptics - and it pains me to allow them that misused word - why is it that they cannot accept climate change? What makes it such a difficult idea?
To answer that question, one has to discover a common feature of the sceptics, something to unite them in their willful unreasoning. When one looks for shared characteristics, an obvious pattern emerges: They are almost all on the political right. Which brings us to the title of this article: Why the Right Cannot Accept Climate Change.
To understand why climate change is so unacceptable to the right, it is necessary to understand that the contemporary right is essentially an uneasy alliance of two factions, each of which relies on the other for its support base.
The first faction of the right is made up of economic or 'classical' conservatives, who support free market economics and a small, non-invasive government. They see the free market as the most socially beneficial means of conducting affairs and trust consumers to regulate business activity.
The second faction is made up of social conservatives, who agree with the ideal of free markets, but disagree on granting civil liberties. Instead, they see the cause of society's ills as 'immorality' or 'moral degeneracy' - in other words, anything that doesn't conform to their own narrow interpretation of Christianity. They therefore support a large, intrusive state, run by authoritarians willing to act outside the law in imposing their beliefs. The logical extension of this idea is a series of foreign military crusades, to impose one brand of morality on the rest of the world, and a variety of attempts to increase the role of religion and nationalism in politics.
These two factions appeal to predominantly the same voting base, and borrow from each others' rhetoric to justify their policies.


As far as I know, climate change is unique, in that it is the only issue to demonstrate the failure of both the right's factions, and therefore of the entire centre-right. If the first faction of classical conservatives concedes that climate change is real, then they also have to acknowledge that heavy economic regulation is necessary, to prevent the far-reaching negative externalities of greenhouse gas emissions, which are encouraged, rather than restricted, by the free market. If the social conservatives admit that climate change isn't a leftist conspiracy, then they have to face facts and admit that some problems are economic, and not moral. That good people can do bad things when their jobs depend on it, or when they just don't know any better. That the last bastion of good Christians, with their oil drilling, cattle ranching and SUVs, have done even more damage to the environment (and therefore society) than all of those bad people who supposedly need to be shepherded by police batons.


The right wingers cannot accept climate change, because it makes redundant their two most fundamental assumptions: that capitalism always works, and that when it doesn't, it is a moral rather than a systemic problem. Accepting climate change would require the right to completely reinvent itself, and this is worrying.
Two party democracy requires strong oppositions, and with climate change becoming increasingly well known, attempts to deny its existence may weaken the right to the point where the left will be provided the opportunity to become more authoritarian, without the need to contrast itself as the freer, more 'liberal' option to the right. Here, the analysis of classical economics is ironically helpful. If we look at representational democracy like a market, we can see that it already contains dangerously little competition - between only two policy producers, the major parties. If one of these 'producers' cannot provide proper competition, then the other is granted an effective monopoly, and can therefore do whatever is wants, as long as it appears less bad than the other option.
I may be a leftist, but that doesn't stop me from being able to see how dangerous the ramifications of climate change could be for the whole of politics, if the left becomes too powerful. After all, even communists can turn into Stalinists when they have too much power.


The left has at least a forty year head start over the right with regards to ecology. The ecological issue has a natural affinity with all parts of the leftist spectrum. It demonstrates clearly that the market does not discourage certain destructive behaviours (in the case of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions), and in fact will often reward them. It shows that negative externalities can greatly outweigh the benefits of competitive efficiency, and that the tragedy of the commons is a real and pressing problem. In short, ecology serves as a terrific vantage point to criticise capitalism from. If capitalism is to survive, then it will need to adopt environmental regulations. If the right is to survive, then it will need to do the same.
A smaller risk that the centre right's 'scepticism' creates is that of strengthening ultra-right. The crowds of socially conservative voters that the right has created over the past eighty years will not easily turn to centre-left environmental parties. If another socially conservative political block can provide these voters with the same social policies, combined with environmentalism, then they may well be able to claim a large swathe of the vote. At the moment, the only movement that provides this option is capital-F Fascism.

Logo of the probably satirical Libertarian National Socialist Green Party (http://www.nazi.org/)

If the left was to become more authoritarian, and the right was to become more extreme, then liberal democracy would be in a lot more trouble than it is currently. The last time that people had a choice between extreme social conservatives with environmentalist policies, and authoritarian leftists attempting to take charge of the entire economy, was the Weimar Republic in 1933. (Isn't it wonderful how you can make any topic come around to Hitler?)


These are worst case scenarios, however, and I suspect that climate change will simply force the current right to become more moderate and liberal, the same way that gay rights, women's liberation and the civil rights movement have. Climate change is going to be very hard to deal with. Perhaps the hardest thing that the world has dealt with so far. But its not impossible to fix, and it could (that's could) bring the world together, rather than forcing it apart. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm still ultimately hopeful.

Introduction

I don't really know where I'm going with this blog. I'm not a fan of diaries in general. If anything, they seem like an excellent way to get trapped by your past and to box yourself into one set definition of who you are. Some people like that.
I suppose they provide a sense of history. Of stability. Perhaps they help people to know themselves better. I've never read many blogs for very long, so I can't really know. I'm not sure if I really want to know. Maybe that's the fun of something like this. That it becomes whatever it needs to be.
Anyway, I'm rambling already, and this is supposed to be an introduction, so I'll try and get to some kind of central crux. But first, some brief and self-indulgent background.
I'm seventeen at the moment. I turn eighteen in a few days, and I think that I've had a good run so far. I don't know what the future has in store for me, or what I have in store for the future, but I see that as a good thing. I've just lived through my first whole decade. The thousands, the Naughties, the 2000s. Whatever you want to call them. And its a funny feeling. To be able to look back with clarity at a whole ten year block like that.
It was a weird decade. Not that any decade is normal. We had planes flying into buildings, and conspiracy theories and war. Nearly everywhere in the west had a reduction in official freedom the likes of which we had never seen before. At least not that I know of, from my extensive almost-eighteen years of experience.
Whatever it was that happened in that strange decade, there were good things as well. It became normal, at least where I live (Sydney, Australia), for people to ask other people about their sexuality, and for people to be honest about it. I hardly think that I hang about with the most normal of people (as if anyone is 'normal'), so I know that my experiences are very different from many others', but at the same time as all that irrational fear about terrorists lurking in the bushes, and those two useless wars (which are still going after eight years), a lot of society got a lot saner and really a lot freer. And that can only be a good thing.
Unfortunately, there's still plenty of work to be done in terms of breaking down gender roles, but its progressing nicely. Men are still 'players' for the same behaviour that gets women labelled 'sluts', but increasingly less so. The only worrying aspect is that the same ridiculous logic has been applied in reverse; We now have 'man-sluts' and female 'players', but I think that those terms will probably die out too.
In terms of music, it was pretty unfortunate. The auto-tuned, mass produced, soft rock, pop punk nonsense of the late 90s continued with little variation. But there were signs of hope. Even if the alternative rock goodness of the early 90s had faded, real authenticity was still there. In anti-folk, the better parts of electro, a new non-Gang$ta wave of hip-hop. Even pop-punk had its antithesis in the resurgence of hardcore and crust. Most wonderfully, boy bands and girl bands died off.
Like always, its been the best of times and the worst of times. For all the mass stupidity that dominated the swing to social conservatism, the appreciation of irony and the normality of real scepticism, not knee-jerk pessimism, has become far more widespread than at the turn of the millennium. Its gone so far that there's even been a reaction against it. 'Hipster' has turned into an insult for those who try to be cool and ironic, and attempts to shock are dismissed as 'edgy' in the sarcastic tone of those so bored with supposedly transgressive behaviour that only paedophilia manages to horrify any more.
Look at that. One side point about the novelty of living through a decade stretches out into five paragraphs. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm writing this thing Jack Keroac style. No going back. Just a long stream of conscious and the faith that if it doesn't turn out well, it will at least turn out interesting. And interesting probably counts more to me, and to you. I hope that it comes off as writing, not just typing.
To get back on track, let me tell you about the title of this blog. Sound Advice and Well Reasoned Analysis. Two of the rarest and most important things in the world. I'll admit that the title is partially a product of the widespread irony that I mentioned earlier, considering that I'm almost equally a fan of rotten advice and illogical ideas. But those are way overdone, and I'd like to contribute to restoring the balance. How quasi-mystical.
Basically, I want you to write me, comment me, message me, your questions. And then I'll elaborate on them. I'll reply to them. It'll be up to you to decide whether I'm giving you the Sound Advice and Well Reasoned Analysis suggested, but we should both enjoy the process.
As well as answering the better of your questions, I'll write about whatever I feel like writing about. I love writing, for its own sake. Its a terrific feeling to know that you've made something new, and with the possibility that this will get a readership, to affect other peoples' lives in any significant way.
I'm not a good writer yet. I want to learn. And this seems like a good way to do it. To tell you a bit more about myself, I like politics, philosophy, people, and art, and those are most likely going to be the topics that I write about. I'm smart, but not I'm that smart. I'm fairly knowledgeable, but I still have a lot to learn, and I'd like you to be part of that process. Oooh, post-modern.
That's all for now. I guess I'll write more soon. All the best, whoever you are. Lets hope that this decade and this blog turn into something wonderful.
As a final note, I just read a tip on blog writing that says that you should put pictures in. I'll do that now.


This is a photograph off my old deviant art. I left that evil place a long time ago, but the computer I had this photo on died a while back, so it was the only way to retrieve it for you. Aren't I good to you, unknown reader? I took this in late 2006 or early 2007, in Colorado.
So there's one post done. I hope that you enjoyed reading it.