The Canadian Student

2003-05-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

The war with Iraq is an issue where the idealistic worldview was found sorely lacking. However, don't think that the message of idealism is not all bad. Domestic social progress in society is always driven by those who believe it could be better (though this is slightly different from those who believe the world to better than it actually is). After all, without any idealists, the dream of democracy may well never have been realized. Racial divides might still exist out in the open at full power, provoking routine violence. The idealist message is an important one for social progress in controlled conditions, where a central government authority has the power, and possibly the will, to change things for everyone.

Not in the geopolitical arena. An arena is just what it is, with no rules except the rules of pure selfish logic that can be relied upon, and even those are not always obeyed when a party is composed of religious fanatics. No central authority has absolute power in the way that a government has power over its people. One powerful group of players may gather into a group and attempt to impose some kind of laws on the world, but no central authority exists that is powerful and willful enough to impose true law - the kind that is unconditionally enforced. Notice that when people decried the "illegal" anglo-American attack on Iraq, nobody even considered actually attempting to enforce the law. It was nothing more than a talking point.

Every nation and alliance on Earth still exists as a totally selfish entity, especially the nations led by dictators of warlords who do not temper their attitudes by worrying about reelection poll numbers. More developed nations have become significantly less violent than in ancient times, but only because our level of technical development has reached a point where we can be comfortable without having to plunder the resources of weaker nations.

This represents a totally different situation than domestic politics. No central authority has the power to make sweeping changes all at once. Cultures are still far too discordant and isolated for a worldwide cultural change to work, like the relatively new anti-racism culture that exists in Europe and North America.

These reasons are why the idealist viewpoint is rarely applicable to matters of international interactions. It would be like a gladiator shouting to his opponents, "Can't we just talk it over and make a deal?"

2003-05-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

"I don't want to live in a world where problems are solved by military aggression. I want to live where multilateral institutions are how problems are solved, and countries don't go invading other countries without approval."

Words of wisdom from an audience member on one of the CBC discussion shows. These are noble ideals. Everyone would be better served if they could be implemented, and geopolitics were fair and uncorrupt. But, of course, they're also ideals that have not been acheived.

Any sensible person realizes that interactions between states continue to be unfair, and are not going to get better for a long time in the future. Multilateral institutions, most notably the UN, never solve difficult problems. They are too indecisive and lack real muscle that is required to solve the difficult problems that they should be solving. Not only are they indecisive and weak, but frequently, they have their hands in the cookie jar right along with whatever criminals they are meant to be bringing to justice. A good investigator could write volumes about the failings of the UN and the massive internal corruption that goes on inside it each day.

Millions, however, continue to blindly believe in these organizations as the be-all and end-all for international dangers and disputes. They just don't seem to see how ineffective (and sometimes even malicious) these institutions are. Why would someone believe this so blindly? Because they want to. Idealism: The belief in attractive ideals and the ignorance of truths too horrifying to face. The debate about the war to remove Saddam Hussein has brought this worldview out into the light and thrust it onto the world stage. Idealists everywhere continued to cling to the idea that war was always bad, no matter what, and should be opposed. These are noble ideals, to be sure, but what if the price of peace is greater than the price of war? This is another part of the real world that the idealists refused to accept, even as the people of Iraq were living in constant terror of their own leader with no end in sight. The ideology of idealism refused to accept the idea that people could be living in such horrible conditions, refused to do the math on losses of human life. They heard the word "war" and shot into action, violently defending their worldview with protests worldwide, oblivious to the fact that, in this case, the peace is a lot more unpleasant that the war.

Why?

Because acknowledging that there are things worse than war in this world is something that they could never do. Their desire to believe in what they want to believe is too strong. The real world is too harsh.

One can see this kind of thinking in everyday life. A study was recently done on the fish stocks off the east coast of Canada, which concluded that they are at about 10% of their original levels. And none of the fishermen seem to believe it. One even said that the fish stocks were regrowing at an "incredible rate". This is the kind of rejection of an ugly reality that is a major problem in most of the developed world. It muddles the decision-making process and leads us to ignore problems that are greatly in need of a solution. In the long run, this hurts everybody, because these problems always come back and nip you in the bud. That is, assuming they don't eat you alive.

An or inaccurate worldview can be very dangerous. Consider the example of Hitler's Nazi Germany. Germany was doing very badly after World War One, at the end of which it had massive war reparations imposed upon it. These ravaged the German economy. The inflation became so bad that women were burning bank notes to heat stoves. Burning the bills was cheaper than buying firewood. Eventually the inflation got so bad that a new currency had to be introduced, which was worth a trillion of the old currency. A trillion!

Germany was in bad shape. By the 1930's, there was growing resentment against the Jewish population. They were widely viewed as the source of Germany's economic woes. Of course, they were not the source of Germany's economic woes, but many of the Germans at the time believed innaccurately that they were. Most notably one, named Adolf Hitler. And so we got the Holocaust, all because of too many people not looking at the world realistically. They saw, in a way, what they wanted to see: the strength of the strong German people being sapped by an insidious foe who was within their own society.

There is also the Soviet Union. This is an easier movement to equate with the modern Western Left, some of whom are still communists. The entire Soviet communistic vision was based on a wildly inaccurate and warped worldview. They refused to accept that the ordinary human being is not intrinsically "good" enough to work for a society when there is little personal gain in it for him. They refused to accept that, with all of it's ugly spots, capitalism is the only economic format that actually works in the long run and will produce a vibrant, prosperous society. And so we got Josef Stalin's death camps, the economic ruin of half of the world, bread lines, and the cold war.

Back to Iraq and the war on terror. The same sort of "see what you want to see" mentality is the direct cause of the war on terror that we now find ourselves embroiled in. The hard-line Islamists that have a penchant for flying planes into buildings are suffering from the same sort of delusional worldview that the Nazis and the Communists, and to a lesser extent, the antiwar protesters are. They see evidence of the failure of their society all around them, though the economic evidence is largely softened by the injections of oil money that they recieve. But the Qu'ran tells them quite clearly that Islam will dominate the world at some point. And they refuse to accept that this cannot be so. So they lash out, and many die. They are seeing what they want to see, really. That is, a problem from without, enemies who they can simply destroy as a simple solution to all of their problems. Of course this doesn't explain all of their motivations - they are also trying to eliminate Western cultural influence. But the transferrence of blame for their own problems is a major part of their fury at the West. If they were seeing the world realistically, there would be no problem with the Middle East. But they are not, and yet again, the Western world has to deal with it, and the conflict is causing great suffering in the mean time.

When life is hard, one becomes brutally realistic in his assesment of the world around him. And when life is easy, the opposite becomes true. This applies to modern-day Europe in another way: the blanket of American protection and support that has existed over that continent for decades has provided an insulator from reality, which has, of course, led to the end of the realistic viewpoint and the rise of socialistic governments, along with the subsequent economic stagnation.

America is successful. It is stable. It is powerful. And it owes a lot of that success to its roots in a frontier society. There is little room for high-minded delusions about an ideal world when one lives in a frontier society. In the early days, communities and individuals were more isolated and had to be self-reliant to survive. Such a situation has not existed in Europe for thousands of years. We've had just the opposite: large, powerful governments that exert a lot of control over ordinary citizens' lives. This leaves room for the attractive idealist fantasy to form. These types of subtle cultural nuances can stay around for a long time, and have a great effect on a society's success or failure. North American society has roots deep in individualism and self-reliance. One who is self-reliant is going to have to try very hard to believe anything other than the truth.

There are people who want to live in a world where multilateral institutions are the way in which international disputes are resolved. They want to live in a world where international law is repsected, and the UN is uncorrupt. And because they want to live in this mythical place, they've decieved themselves into believing that they do live in this place, and they're causing a lot of problems trying to perpetuate that fantasy.

2003-05-13T20:22:00.000-07:00

ArabNews has an article on dialogue between Iraqis and American students. Read it.

This struck me:

Americans during each exchange, both those for and against the war, were idealists. And Iraqis, both before and after the war were realists

I think I'll write a peice on idealism and realism as defining elements of the differences between the left and right, anti-war and war supporters. Stick around.

2003-05-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

The blasts in the Saudi Capital seem, in an ironic way, to actually be a sign of progress.

Think about it. Terrorist attacks have been getting deadlier for years. Bombs got bigger, targets became more significant, death tolls rose, until eventually it all culminated on Sept 11. Now the terrorists are back to plinking away with van-bombs in their own homelands. We're back in the early '90s, and I'm happy about it.

On another note, What is this decade called? Does anyone know? Drop me a line if you can think of a name.

2003-05-13T20:03:00.000-07:00

Hello, and welcome to the place where the machinations of my mind are exposed for all to see. This is the first post. I will be updating more, of course.

A little background:

Up here in Canada, things are pretty liberal. Our prime minister can barely form a sentence, even when he does actually make a decision on something and stops flip-flopping like a grounded tuna fish. The CBC (that's the Canadian Broadcasting Channel) doesn't seem to have a single news anchor who doesn't fit into an ethnic minority of speak with an accent. If your plane was diverted here by accident, I think you might have trouble figuring out where you are from the news channel.

The entire political system in Canada is so stagnant and convoluted it's hard to even describe. Most of the politicians around seem to have been here since at least the mid-1970s. I only wish that we could have some fresh meat every decade or so. Even worse than the politicians so old that their faces look like prunes, the right-wing vote in our country is split soundly down the middle. These factors, in addition to the government corruption, contribute to a system where the entire country is a dictatorship run by the leader of the Liberal Party.

More on all this later.