Some Things Never Change

[marct]

Not a Galbraith fan, either. So I was not; you of course, may do so... ....
We can disagree. Glad to see you endorse 'power' in a non-Galbraithian sense.

I always thought he was way too materialistic, sort of analogous to the behaviouralists like Skinner or Pavlov in psychology. Personally, I think the two best theoreticians on "power" right now are Stewart Clegg and Starhawk. Stewart really captures how systems of power operate, and Starhawk really gets how they are constructed and overthrown.

I won't be around long enough when they sputter and die out to say "I told you so" so you can consider it said now and hang on to it for less than 20 years from today.

Oh, I doubt you will see them dying out. First off, I fully expect you to be around in 20 years, and second, I'm pretty sure we 20 years from now will just show us another bunch of ego-centric psychotics wanting to control the world . 100 years from now, OTOH, will be another story...

[slapout9]

I always thought he was way too materialistic, sort of analogous to the behaviouralists like Skinner or Pavlov in psychology.

Oh that is all skint up and stuff

[Schmedlap]

Long way of saying that fighting for corporate interests has been broadly successful and beneficial to most of the world, whereas the ideological and / or religiously fervent types who aim for our souls -- not so much. They have no staying power when the initiating generation dies.

The "corporate interest" angle sounds like something that could evolve into about 15 different threads. It sounds both too vague and too sweeping. I would simply rebut that if a competitive interest must be fought for, rather than achieved through hard work and creativity, then it was probably not the most beneficial outcome of the available alternatives. It just happens to be one that we look at afterwards and say, "okay, this ain't bad."

Regarding the "religiously" fervent types, do they really lack staying power beyond the initiating generation? I'm not so sure. Muhammed spread Islam by the sword and the Middle East remains Islamic, aside from a small strip of land called Israel. Islam arrived in the Balkans when the conquering Turks introduced it hundreds of years ago. It remains there today. They still practice Sufi Islam and still brew Turkish coffee (bring your own cup - theirs are about the size of shot glasses).

[Ken White]

Oh, I doubt you will see them dying out. First off, I fully expect you to be around in 20 years, and second, I'm pretty sure we 20 years from now will just show us another bunch of ego-centric psychotics wanting to control the world . 100 years from now, OTOH, will be another story...

than a few years but I suspect a body that has, as they say, been rode hard and put up wet isn't likely to cooperate.

I meant the current crop of leaders will be gone within 20 years and their various organizations will morph to less deadly variants -- to be replaced, as you say, by a totally new batch of nut cases with a different agenda to cause minor panic and showcase the general failure of the west to rapidly adapt.

Schmedlap also suspects that you're correct. I certainly could be wrong and he and you correct. He says the religiously fervent types will outlast the current generation. He correctly ascribes it to a generation rather than my 20 years, picked as a number because these guys are really at the end of their generation which came to the fore after the Six Day war and the War of Attrition embarrassed them and gave them a 'cause' (thus my 20 years was a very conservative estimate -- I suspect it will be somewhat sooner).

To be sure they will have followers and successors, religion has great staying power -- but it changes with the times or slightly behind them. Some religions are further behind the times but today rapid global communications will put put significant pressure on them.

Regardless, history, I think is generally on my side with respect to the extreme ideologies and religious zealots -- the ideology and the religion stay, however the zealotry and / or fanatacism tend to be countered, seen as excessive, annoy a great many potential supporters and turn off many nominally disinterested observers. Their excesses hurt them and their cause and thus as the hard core die, the movement usually dissipates and morphs to either underground or less rabid manifestations. Y'all check it out in 2029 and send me a wire...

Zealotry from any source is counterproductive and dangerous, thus you'd think we'd be smart enough to avoid it. Not so, each new generation brings a fresh crop -- usually with different agendas than their predecessors. Can't emulate the preceding generation...

[Surferbeetle]

...a very interesting post.

Marc,

If you have a paper or two to share I am always interested in reading them...and perhaps one of these times I will be able to provide some helpful comments

I've been spending a lot of time over the past year or so thinking about conceptualizations of "violence", motivations for different types, etc. One of the models I'm trying to put together concerns the emergence of differing conventions (in the very broad sense) in situations of rapid environmental change (and by that I mean, physical, economic, social, cultural, etc. environments). What is really striking me as I try and untangle all the stuff I'm looking at is that for the past 10-12,000 years or so, we have really done ourselves a disservice (i.e. shot ourselves in the foot if not higher).

One thing that really stands out for me is how we have parsed the concept of "conflict" and "conflict resolution". Violence in the physical/kinetic sense is, to my mind, only one form of conflict / conflict resolution. If we go back to basic motivations for conflict, most of them seem, to me at least, to break down into one person/group trying access "scarce" resources and the consequent "power" that control over those resources represents and, once they gain control over them, trying to maintain that control.

G.F. Gause, a Russian Microbiologist, took a look at the responses of pairs of protozoan and yeast species in homogeneous environments back in the 1930's and quantified resulting growth rates. The results were something we all intuitively know, competition creates winners and losers, but he is credited with Gause's Competitive Exclusion Principle

The Lotka and Volterra equations, developed in the 1920's, are in this vein of inquiry. Wolfram's mathworld is an interesting place and has an entry on these equations.

As I was saying, economic warfare has been a hallmark of the Industrial Age, and Cyber-warfare, at least in the sense of hacking / cracking, interceptions, spying, manipulation of electronic economic systems, etc. is just an extension of the Industrial Age thinking about spying and economic warfare. What we are seeing with AQ and many other extremist groups is a totally different battlespace - they are aiming at our "souls"; our sense of meaning.

I would love to work on this one this evening but will have to save it for another day...

Best,

Steve

[marct]

Hey Steve,

If you have a paper or two to share I am always interested in reading them...and perhaps one of these times I will be able to provide some helpful comments

I'll be putting one together over the summer and I'll be glad to shoot it off to you. As always, please rip it apart .

The Lotka and Volterra equations, developed in the 1920's, are in this vein of inquiry. Wolfram's mathworld is an interesting place and has an entry on these equations.

Thanks for the source! I've been rereading Lotka's elements of mathematical biology, but my math skills are pretty weak .

Cheers,

Marc