Hi WM,

Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
R. G. Collingwood described an interesting phenomenon in explanations that he called the Fallacy of Swapping Horses (as in "you can't swap horses in the middle of a stream.") I have no qualms about your distinction as long as we remember to keep astride of the same "horse of paradox" as that mounted by the author. The koan comparison is extremely apt IMO. I think we might also call out your use of paradox as a sub-category of cognitive dissonance. Your thoughts?
Good point. I'm not sure I would call it a sub-category of CD; more of a technology designed to produce CD. Then again, I tend to view symbolic manipulation as a technology, at least in the sense used by Ellul.

One of the more interesting observations about the way paradox operates in religion, and I'm appalled to admit the reference has dropped out of my mind , is that paradoxes are crucial for religions but that the resolution of any paradox will shift the further that you work your way into the religion. I think that the same might apply in a COIN situation. Sorry, I'm looping back to the crisp vs. fuzzy distinction here. "War" has, at least on and off for the past 300 years or so, been a relatively crisp set - well defined rules, protocols, etc. Insurgency and Counter-insurgency, on the other hand, comprise a much more fuzzy set - sometimes "war", sometimes not. I would suspect that the "paradoxes" of "war" in the formal, crisp sense, are both well understood, mapped out and routinized within military institutions, while those of insurgency - counterinsurgency are not. This might explain the hysteresis effect on military institutions during peacetime.

Anyway, that's for another discussion sometime...

Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
I'd be curious to see what he has to say regarding what's been posted to date.
I am too.