Thursday, November 09, 2006

Rumsfeld: The Opposite of Wisdom is Certainty

Otherwise sane and intelligent women used to go weak at the spectacle of craggy Donald Rumsfeld delivering his impatient wisecracks. In conversation with one weakened neocon lady and rummyphile, I realised that what they saw was an idealised image of male wisdom. But, in fact, Rumsfeld was displaying certainty, the antithesis of wisdom. He was certain the Iraqis would fall into the arms of the invaders and he was certain technology made small military units effective against mass insurgency. Behind these certainties was the larger certainty embodied in the neocon view of history - that American liberal democracy was a universal good and a historical end point. (Francis Fukuyama, once a card-carrying neocon himself, pointed out that to impose this certainty by invading Iraq was inconsistent since it defied another neocon belief in the limitations of government. This paradox may not be an argument against the invasion, but it should have modified its strategy.) An invasion of Iraq may have been right, but it could only fail if it was undertaken by leaders too certain to be flexible - ie Rumsfeld. In war, only pragmatists prevail. The issue is, therefore, certainty. Soon after 9/11 I attended a conference in Boston - see my account here - about historical determinism, the ideology shared by both Marxists and neocons. My contribution was to say that only the most hopelessly scientistic thinkers could convince themselves that we would ever be able to establish whether determinism or freedom was embodied in history and, indeed, the universe. It is unknowable. Happily, neuroscience seems to be coming round to this view. Adina Roskies - mysteriously described at The Garden of Forking Paths as 'unstoppable' - argues that no development in neuroscience will ever destroy our sense of ourselves as undeterministic. Her full paper, linked at the Garden, is worth reading. Rumsfeld had a deterministic mindset; it is the single most dangerous mental condition. In this case, it fatally compromised America's ability to do what she does best - deploying the natural pragmatism of her greatest minds to save the certain from themselves.

12 comments:

  1. Bryan, I am absolutely sure you are right.

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  2. Oh, I was just beginning to have doubts....

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  3. Yes, but you are absolutely right to have doubts. But seriously, those who do the most harm in this life are those who believe wholeheartedly that they have cornered the market in truth. I think it was Einstein who said something about truth being a function of time; scientific truth, any truth, is a temporal, quantitative entity and cannot be dogma or good for eternity. Let's face it, the number of rational hypotheses that can explain a phenomenon is almost infinite. It's just that some are better than others for now and yield better results for everyone. Damn it, I'm beginning to sound like a utilitarian. Or worse, a relativist. There is truth out there, somewhere, isn't there?

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  4. 'We must believe in free will. We have no choice'
    - Isaac Bashevis Singer.

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  5. Bryan: Great post.

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  6. Interesting article. Please turn this insight onto the world's great religons.

    Your blog will get more hits!

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  7. Neil Forsyth is right here: But seriously, those who do the most harm in this life are those who believe wholeheartedly that they have cornered the market in truth. However, certainty does not always have to mean lack of wisdom. sometimes wisdom leads to certainty, such as the knowledge that this is a good blog. I'm certain of it.

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  8. Nothing to disagree with in Bryan's post but as regards the tangent of man's relationship with "truth" in an ultimate sense, not a historical one(the presumption to imagine a rational framework can do any kind of justice to life at these kind of levels...), I would say things like Beethoven's Fifth or Hendrix's Voodoo Chile are expressions of people who, at least in the privacy of their own consciousnesses, are very much dwelling in this land of certainty.
    And to go on a quite a bit more of a tangent, I remember seeing the supreb Orson Welles film A Touch of Evil which clearly was deriving much inspiration from Othello which Welles was engaged in trying to film off and on over a very long time. I think Charlton Henston's dark skinned character was a modern American version of Othello himself and who was confronted by his wife's fake infidelities. Unlike Othello though, this modern man was actually incapable of doubt and in a sense I feel intentionally rendered ridiculous by the mischievous Welles whose real interest lay in the complex flawed character played by himself.

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  9. This is a fantastic post- for all the reasons outlined by others above. I think there is another aspect to things here as well though- Rumsfeld like Bush had an epistemelogical certainty but also a moral certainty. Part of the problem with him is that he couldn't see how his actions could look wrong, so consequently because he couldn't take seriously his enemies he underrated their appeal to the population of Iraq, consequently he didn't view the insurgency as a respectable entity. I personally think there is a moral arrogance at the root of what happened in Iraq as well as an intellectual arrogance.

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  10. That's an interesting point, Andrew: art and its relationship with truth and certainty. In the absence of recognisable, universal truths, art is probably the only human activity, at its best, that obviates the need for philosophical justification and presents us with something that feels like the real thing. For me, music is the exemplar: no words, no right, no wrong, just purity of expression. There has to be a truth in there somewhere.

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  11. Gracchi, regarding the moral arrogance of the neo-cons, you may be interested in this piece on Leo Strauss- a kind of philosophical father figure for the brethren.
    http://www.alternet.org/story/15935
    And to cast a quote or two from Beethoven into the maelstrom-
    "Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend."
    "When I open my eyes I must sigh, for what I see is contrary to my religion, and I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."

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  12. There is deterministic but there is also inflexibility and Rumsfeld was certainly guilty of inflexibility!

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