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Recently, one of our inner circle
members asked me about the "strategy of the Obama
administration to "bomb" ISiS...
Over the years, I've studied Systems
Dynamics (developed at MIT from "Industrial Dynamics") by Jay
Forrester, who later guided the "Italian Job" (hehe) in 1972s
"Limits to Growth."
You can get a very short/fast blurb on
Systems Dynamics here:
http://www.flow.ph/2014/SD/references/executive/
The question I want to explore in this
TPOV is related to how "deep" you make an intervention.
By now, you have probably realized that
everything is related to a "hierarchy of complexity". In other
words, some things are more complex than others and "levels"
are emergent from the way in which complexity hierarchies (in
general) are constructed.
Unfortunately I'm not versed enough in SD
software to create a quick systems diagram for you, but here's
an arrow diagram to illustrate what I think might be context
for the "OBAMA question" above.
I don't know if they think this way, but
I need context for the TPOV (bear with me and give me the
benefit of the doubt, regardless of your political leanings.)
If ISIS grows-->it will be bad for the
world-->bad for the USA. (Bomb ISIS)
That's basically what I think is an
oversimplified way of building some context to explain their
"intervention--> bomb ISIS.
Of course, it's more complex, but here's
what I think about "IS DEEPER BETTER?"
As all of us bound reality, we make
assumptions about that reality in its bounded form--it's
natural and "right".
The question begged here by our inner
circle member needs to be answered with some degree of caution
because we can NEVER get to the bottom of things (more than
likely), although we can get pretty deeper into the causal
field, as most realize.
My answer then, to the question...
Is deeper better?
Do (practically) we need to get on the
ground with those people?
George H.W. Bush felt it was a mistake.
Later came "911" and George W. Bush persuaded everyone that we
needed to be on the ground.
Later came Obama and said, being on the ground is a mistake.
NOW, Obama is back to "intervention" from the air.
Air, land, sea? Is deeper better?
The reason that this is such an important TPOV, is that I
believe that it is important to go as deep as you can, even
though you may not be able to get all the way down to the
basic nature of systems.
I believe if we had, or could find, build or simulate these
conditions (and I don't know why they are not, hmm), I believe
that by NOT going deep enough, you actually make things
worse...and that was the basis of my rant on audio: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/2014-roles/140911-Mike-on-World-Affairs.mp3).
Helpful Hint: There is a tendency with
leaders (because they don't understand postmodern conditions)
in postmodern conditions (a mismatch between the leader's
capability and the requirements in those conditions) to make
knee jerk "symptomatic decisions." This is not a bad leader,
it is the reflection of a mismatch between capability and
requirements! The tendency to quiet, or to anticipate the
emergence of noise causes leadership tension, which is
normally enough to cause a leader in this kind of mismatch to
pull a lever, rather than be "seen" as doing nothing...when
precisely that is what the leader should be, do, have, become
and contribute @F-L-O-W.
Action Step: When tension arises, the key
linchpin (IMHO) is to assess complexity first! If complexity
is beyond the capability of those in place to grok it, then
doing nothing while exploring perspectives is the best thing
to do.
NOW, to answer the question and to apply the TPOV:
In our vigniette with ISIS, ISIS is not going anywhere, the
key is not to bomb ISIS, but to eliminate as many of their
options as possible, and it's not through bombing--at best, a
short term measure--which in all actuality will do ONE thing
we shouldn't do!
And that is to "motivate" others to join the cause.
The way psychology works is to unite people against bully's
(obviously ISIS has chosen to violate this)...however, to do
the same thing, to "discriminately" bomb people where innocent
people will continue to be killed, either by ISIS or the
bombing, what actually have we accomplished, other than to
"quiet" those who rail about the injustice from their point of
view.
NOW, in a political system, it really matters who is making
noise and this is the problem with a political system (that is
for another place and time of exploring "IS DEEPER BETTER?"
towards Is deeper, deep enough?)
Clearly, being able to raise a coalition of the faithful to go
back on the ground is impossible, especially in light of the
Cul de sac Obama created in his election promises. As I noted
in the audio, as cynical as it might sound, this is a "wag the
dog" political decision that like the "W" decisions, will come
back to haunt us.
The question remains...IS DEEPER BETTER?
This question is a difficult one to answer for any leader who
understands there almost is no bottom!
EVENTUALLY, non-intervention has it's own emergent effect, the
question remains for me, is the future value (negative) of
this effect worth the NPV of the decision now?
The ONLY way to answer this is to map the strategy to the
bottom and OBAMA et al, nor have the political opposites
mapped this to the bottom.
During a two year period in the late 90s, I looked at the
memetic mapping of Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hindu, and
Islam. All of those map to the "cool" side of the hot-cold
pendulum range, except one: Islam.
Islam is a hot religion, in that it has a founding tenet of
convert or die. There is no middle ground in the theology,
although most will say there is in moderate translations.
With ISIS, we now face the bottom.
If you are NOT WILLING TO GO TO THE BOTTOM, then almost any
intervention is not going to produce the benefits desired in
the strategy, in this case, to remove ISIS.
While I've oversimplified the process of getting to the bottom
of causal triggers, you can see that all Obama, et al have
done is pacify (ironically) those elements that are already
not operating "deep" enough.
The question now, might be, what should we do then, if bombing
is just going to make things worse?
[In case, you don't think things have been made worse by the
interventions thus far, just look at the proliferation of
radicalism in Islam and you will find now, instead of a
network in the Middle East, radical, fundamental Islam is
taking hold in every country in the world! Killing Osama by
Obama was just one of these failed strategies that have led to
the proliferation of "many Osama clones" around the world.]
While this now becomes a political and religious argument, it
also has hidden in its agenda an economic one, and beyond
that, a paradigmatic one, which is MUCH more complex than I
have time to write, but here's a hint: "Is progress better?"
Try to dig to the bottom of that one and you will realize that
the war that is being setup is a war started by
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad in 622, the date the
Islamic calendar began.
The basic assumption?
Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly,
proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" (lit.
islām) to Him is the only way (dīn)[n 3] acceptable to God
While one can argue about the "rightness" of any of these
assumptions, until you begin with these
assumptions--irrational as they might be, you are not going
deep enough.
There is no part of this doctrine that says, "it's up to you
to decide."
It has already been decided and therefore this "movement" can
NOT be stopped rationally, and therefore I believe every
intervention you make, the risk of making it worse, rather
than better is very high.
It's been some time since I read ENEMIES OF CIVILIZATION by
Harris, but his thesis was, "they who are the most ruthless
are an enemy to civilization" to paraphrase, and only when you
are as ruthless as "they are" can you prevail.
Hopefully (pun intended) you can see the metasystem here, and
that is:
Until you are willing to go deep enough, then intervention has
a high risk of making the situation you are trying to
remedy-->WORSE, bringing it back again (as is clearly in
evidence now with ISIS) more virulent. This same underlying
mechanism is destroying part of civilization today, even
without people thinking it's that bad, and that is our battle
with bacteria.
Superficial solutions are making things worse in the world of
bacterial disease, soon to be as ruthless as it can be in
leading to population threats in many more countries than
previously thought.
The same superficial solution that "bombing ISIS" provides
leads me to believe that we are NOT NEARLY DEEP ENOUGH, which
means things in a virulent world (values or bacteria) are made
worse, but not incremental worsening, exponential, non-linear
worse.
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