Juggling priceless eggs in variable gravity

 

Turin, October 15^th, 2023

Juggling priceless eggs in variable gravity

We have no political leaders, only intermediaries. Hence these dismiss any position in which their “employer” ends up with an advantage as unpalatable. And if you play to draw or lose but not win, end results are less than optimal for western countries and cultures.The title is a quote from “The mote in God's eye”, a book that I highly recommend reading.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas has brought anguish and turmoil everywhere. I have been following it up close because on top of listing geopolitics and military conflict as things I am most interested in, I have friends in Israel, and I am a friend of Israel, before someone asks or implies. But that's not the main focus of a thought that dawned on me this morning. My assessment of what has happened or might happened in the theater of operation is mine to share, and I share that....sparingly. But what caught my attention, also because it directly touches on my life, is the various reactions of international players and organizations, especially in the West and above all the EU, where I live.

Assumptions first: I base my thoughts on the assumptions that on average under stress, people and organizations “revert to type”, i.e. they throw whatever brain they have out of the window and listen to the instinctual monkey inside. Also, my second assumption is that.... instinct is not the bad thing it's cracked out to be. Rather, simply because many of the responses seem (and many are) “bad ideas”, they look like that because we see them at the individual level instead of group/race (as in “Lizards vs. Monkeys”), and we dismiss that survivability hinges on ensuring a maximum number of people of opposite sex and in reproductive age survive. Think “screaming when a fire starts in a darkened cinema”. Yes, there is a small element of preparedness involved, like having checked the routes out and sitting near emergency exits, but admit it, these are thoughts for 60 year old guys with a bad leg like me, most young would make it from anywhere in the cinema to safety. That might explain why old people exist, by the way: they survive disasters only on their brains since physical risks are much more challenging,... but I digress.

So, I watched MY overlords' reactions with much more interest than I watched reactions in the area, once I checked that my friends were safe. And with the passage of time, their message shifted, in a direction actually DIFFERENT of what I would have thought under my assumptions. Let's take the #EU as an example: the first declarations was that it would stop financial aid completely since there is no certainty that it hadn't been used by Hamas, only to reverse course in short order, and ending in this:

[source]

This is, alas “reverting to type” in quick succession. Remember, political decision are taken by collectives that must reach a reasonable consensus, where “reasonable” is absolutely NOT meant to refer to the quality of the decision, but on the number of “Yes” votes it might attract inside the organization and out. BUT, when people are REALLY afraid (and what happened scared a majority of the people anywhere), it's “everyone for himself”.... hence the FIRST reaction, cutting economic ties. After all if you are a politician and think “targeted money” is REALLY targeted, I have a bridge to sell you, lightly used. So, from where I sit the gut reaction was rather correct.

BUT, then everyone stopped being an individual and committee dynamics ensued. And organizations, like people, have a survival instinct. Hence the 180° turn: if you accept that no amount of “compliance” could stop money sent to Gaza from helping Hamas... implicitly you are saying that #UN and especially #UNRWA helped it. Before someone sends Ernst & Young trainees to account for water tubing to see if it was turned into missiles launched against Israel [Spoiler alert: they were], it is imperative to save the ROLES of these players. And alas, they are not "political leaders" and they don't even see themselves as such. Just stop and think about it: from the initial day, everyone has seen lots of shuttle diplomacy, calls for “truce”, declarations in favor of “diplomatic solutions”. As to “viable end states NOT requiring continuous adjustments due to their inherent instability”, heads of the various players have been rather mute. And I agree with Nassim Taleb who today posted a thought that went home:

“Peace is something systemic, not contractual.”

Now, if your job description is “career diplomat” but you are not one of the few dozen who REALLY are smart and good at that job, “systemic solutions” are not your cup of tea, for two reasons: first you don't have the slightest idea of how one would look like, and second... I have the privilege of being in personal contact with a small number of the VERY good ones, and from what I learned about them and from them, their objective is to “finish the job”, i.e., establish SYSTEMIC solutions and then go do something else.

That won't do if instead of “Principal”, you are an “Agent”. And my thesis, or rather, my frame of reference after these past few days is that what purportedly are “political authorities” act as agents or mediators, but most importantly, they SEE themselves as such.

Hence the title of this piece: in the book [spoiler alert] an alien species is divided into a kind of sub-races, one of which, the Mediators, are supremely good at defusing conflict situations in one arises... and are incapable of defining parameters like “win” or “lose” for ANY of the sides, for that they actually NEED “masters”. They are selfless empathy machines, who care for the progeny of the race, but they cannot take actual decisions.

Now take away “Selfless”, “Empathy” and “care”, and the description fits any and all present western leadership and organizations when you look at what they DO instead of what they claim they do, like boarding a private jet to go to Davos to decide how next to deprive common people of the same liberties and luxuries they indulge in. 

European leadership looks much more interested in shaping "the new man" they like out of their original citizens, while being utterly unable to assimilate an alien culture immigrant population to the minimum requirement to condemn wanton attacks on Children without question, and condemning the people /organizations organizing it to oblivion. Remember that one of the key moments in the fight against Mafia in Italy was when it killed and dissolved in acid the son of a former Mafia member turned informer. From then on, no claim of whatever “order” they could do had efficacy.

On the same line, think about the effort which continues to this day to keep the population in line about COVID ( a parliamentary  tribunal in Italy threw out  ALL lawsuits and challenges pertaining the state powers used during that period) and compare it with what has been applied to pro - Palestine protesters, even when the words got REALLY out of hands. And remember, as a libertarian I DEFEND the liberty of that, for all opinions. But liberty is nothing without responsibility.

Coming back to the book, there was a small thing that is pertinent to the situation at hand: in the initial "cultural exchanges" between aliens and men, the aliens give to men a game. It consists of reconstructing the RULES of the opposing player out of the set of behavior that the other player shows during the game.

More and more, in these treacherous times, this approach has proven useful: I don't want your "mission statements", your "Ethics", your "compliance goals". Show me what you do, I'll work out what rules you REALLY abide to. That's where I got this idea: Europe, for one, doesn't "want to win" any more, which is a pity, because economics is not a zero sum game: if one strives to win, ALL win.