Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

An interesting read, recommended by someone I spent time with at the Army War College earlier this year.

Goodreads link to Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

I have mixed feelings about it as I had initially expected a view of perhaps a bit of "here's what I see for the future" and how we should approach and think about the changes we will confront going forward.

There is some of that. There is also some fairly broad assertions and generalizations.  Perhaps the part I found of most value was the chapter on terrorism and how we don't think rationally about terror attacks versus car accidents and other events that are much more likely to cause us harm from a statistical standpoint. I was aware of this, but he does a good job of pointing out governmental and societal impacts- how it impacts decision making, resource allocation, messaging and communications, etc.

What at times drove me to distraction were his attacks on religion and nationalism.  He espouses secularism, but defines it in a way that as I did a little more digging, sounded more like secular humanism, not secularism. In his view, the benefits and positive aspects of religions of all kinds are far outweighed by all the negative aspects, and spends considerable time covering the sins of religion. I don't dispute many of those reviews. While he acknowledges elements of religion that are good, he really de-emphasizes them relative to those problems.

Defining secularism as a focus on reducing suffering of all kinds, rather than as simply the separation of church and state (without taking a position on the value of one, or all, religions) was the part that caused me to reflect. What is it about secularism that allows it to claim reduction suffering as a goal, but religions cannot? I'm not a secularism scholar, so my thinking here is not very mature, and wikipedia did not move me forward in this regard, with suffering not mentioned once on that page.

I agree generally with his critiques of nationalism. I am perfectly content to sing the praises of my country, salute the flag, and given my military duties, die and order others into dangerous activity in defense of my country. The danger comes when nationalism turns from "I love my country," to "my country is better than any other country" and therefore a human being from my country is more important and valuable than a human being from any other country.  In Yuval's mind, this is an awareness of a global need to reduce suffering, an awareness which comes from rejection of the many lies of religion and nationalism. For me, this idea that we are all equally valuable brothers and sisters came from my faith and upbringing, the same faith that he criticizes as a fiction. Further, while nations are not always consistent in their collective behavior, there are some that do more than pay lip service to the reduction of suffering.  So there's that.

And I don't think he fully acknowledges there are governments of countries that deny even the existence of human rights and differentiate those governments from countries/governments that do acknowledge and espouse, albeit imperfectly human rights and similar values.

I feel like he conflates technology, social science and artificial intelligence. Many algorithms, which he points to as the future sources of control in society, are devised and revised by people, not machines. I don't think of those necessarily as artificial intelligence at all. And many algorithms and advertising campaigns draw from social science, developed by humans, not machines.  To go back to his earlier arguments about the sins of religion and nationalism, math and science are being exploited in algorithms and advertising, not necessarily religion and nationalism- or that they are being used one in service of another. I would point towards power and money being the motivating factors for much of the damage being done today, and religion and nationalism are simply the fronts for those with malevolent intent.

Interesting to me how much of an influence Disney has been in his life. I just think of the company as in investment, the current owner of the Star Wars franchise, and the company that forces me to pay large sums of money to create memories for my family standing in line in the Florida heat for things I don't find amusing in the least bit personally.  I did make my family pay last time, however, singing at the top of my lungs, slightly off-key and off time at the Frozen sing along, drawing concerned glances from the Disney characters up on stage, and red faces from the family. Serves 'em right for making me come along.

A few quotes that I found relevant and timely as we view a recent impeachment and the seeming complete abandonment of any efforts to tell the truth by Republican leaders:

p. 242: from Joseph Goebbels, "A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."- in the words of the Washington Post, we call this the "bottomless Pinocchio" with some prominent figures being multiple time recipients of this esteemed award.

From my psychology training at the Master's and Doctorate level, I remember courses in social psychology in which research was shared that over time people forget the source of what is said, and as they do so, they also tend to think less critically about the content of the message, such that they forget the liar and that it is even a lie.  "People are saying" can be used to mask the fact that the individual saying it is, in fact, those "people" for example.

Again from p 242, from Mein Kampf, "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly- it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over." Yes, that is Hitler.

A couple of pages later, p. 244: "In fact, false stories have an intrinsic advantage over the truth when it comes to uniting people.  If you want to gauge group loyalty, requiring people to believe an absurdity is a far better test than asking them to believe the truth."

Back to the religion and secularism considerations, p. 303: "In itself, the universe is only a meaningless hodge-podge of atoms." In the authors telling, again, p. 303, "I give meaning to the universe." The meaning he assigns suggests a constructivist viewpoint, but I'm not sure it entitles the argument that one assigned meaning is to be privileged over another, and not sure that secularism entitles that argument either.

Interesting to think about and I appreciated the recommendation to read it.

The Imperial Presidency, Drift and The Infinity War

As I think of friends in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan and others who are no longer with us, I occasionally come across articles and/or books that resonate with personal observations.

Spending last year at the Army War College, was able to think about the nature and character of war, and reflect from time to time on that nature/character question relative to Iraq, Afghanistan and now Syria and our involvement. A recent article in the WaPo (free online subscription for us military types!) wrote about our "Infinity War".

And that reminded me of another War College experience, reading Rachel Maddow's "Drift", and then our reading group (and spouses!) getting to meet and talk with her in NYC. For someone not in the military and for whom the military is not a primary focus, she did an extraordinary job of articulating some concerns about the political-military-industrial complex and how the military activity (and military spending) has somehow become separate from the rest of society (the recent WaPo series of articles they are calling "the Afghanistan Papers" is perhaps a counterpoint).  She also showed a tremendous amount of respect to our War College group, having prepared for our meeting by learning a bit about each of us before we met. She admitted it can be a bit intimidating meeting with military officers given that she took on writing on the military despite not having a deep military background, so that preparation was not just respect but her wanting to be prepared from a sense of showing she does her homework.

She and others have pointed things out such as the frequent use of the military without going through steps designed Constitutionally to limit the use of the military- like declaring war (last time? 1942). Now, we have "authorized use of military force," but even that is open to debate about what exactly that authorizes- conditions, terms, magnitude, purpose, etc.

The use of the military is tied in some respects to the desired application of military power by the Commander in Chief, and both the left and the right have accused sitting presidents of abusing that power (including current impeachment proceedings). As I studied the problem over the past year at War College, I came to see the increasing power of the President not just as a power grab by the executive branch, but also as a function of a Congress that has been willing to cede power. That willingness in my estimation is partly inadvertent or unconscious, other times is has been cowardice or cold political calculation that the President, not Congress, would bear the burden for things going wrong. But it is by no means a new phenomenon, and I recommend the following to those who argue that Congress is too powerful as it fights back against the powers of the executive branch- Paul Starobin's article back in 2006 and Schlesinger's "The Imperial Presidency" from 1973.